/9 


IN  COMMEMORATION  OF  THE  WORK  OF 

THE  EIGHT  THOUSAND  YALE  MEN 

WHO  TOOK  FART  IN  THE  WORLD  WAR 

1914-1918 


HOW  AMERICA  WENT  TO  WAR 

THE  GIANT  HAND 

THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE  I. 

THE  ROAD  TO  FRANCE  11. 

THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY  I. 

THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY  II. 

DEMOBILIZATION 


HOW  AMERICA  WENT 
TO  WAR 

AN  ACCOUNT  FROM  OFFICIAL  SOURCES  OF 
THE  NATION'S  WAR  ACTIVITIES 

1917-1920 


^1 


THE 

ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

I. 

OUR  NATION'S  MANUFACTURE  OF 
MUNITIONS  FOR  A  WORLD  IN  ARMS 

1917-1918 


BY  BENEDICT  CROWELL 

THE  ASSISTANT  SECRETARY  OF  WAR  AND 
DIRECTOR  OF  MUNITIONS    1917-1920 

AND  ROBERT  FORREST  WILSON 

FORMERLY  CAPTAIN.  UNITED  STATES  ARMY 

ILLUSTRATED  WITH  PHOTOGRAPHS  FROM  THE 
COLLECTIONS  OF  THE  WAR  AND  NAVY  DEPARTMENTS 


NEW  HAVEN 

YALE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

LONDON  •  HUMPHREY  MILFORD  •  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

MDCCCCXXI 


/i 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
Yale  University  Press 


CONTENTS 


Introduction        ......... 

XV 

Preface 

. 

XXV 

Chapter 

I. 

War  Department  Organization    .          .          .          . 

1 

II. 

The  Ordnance  Problem       .          .          .          .          . 

20 

III. 

Gun   Production          ...... 

42 

IV. 

Mobile  Field  Artillery         .          .        '  . 

63 

V. 

Railway  Artillery       ..... 

105 

VI. 

Motorized  Artillery    ..... 

129 

VII. 

Sights  and  Fire-control  Apparatus 

142 

VIII. 

Explosives,  Propellants,  and  Artillery  Ammunitior 

I          154 

IX. 

Tanks       ....... 

193 

X. 

Machine  Guns  ...... 

200 

XL 

Service  Rifles    ...... 

225 

XII. 

Pistols  and  Revolvers           .... 

238 

XIII. 

Small-arms  Ammunition      .... 

244 

XIV. 

Trench-warfare  Material     .... 

256 

XV. 

Miscellaneous  Ordnance  Equipment 

285 

XVI. 

Navy  Ordnance           ..... 

299 

XVII. 

Airplanes            ...... 

325 

XVIII. 

The  Liberty  Engine  ..... 

362 

XIX. 

Other  Airplane  Engines       .... 

383 

XX. 

Aviation  Equipment  and  Armament 

399 

XXI. 

The  Airplane  Radio  Telephone     . 

437 

XXII. 

Balloons  ....... 

447 

XXIII. 

Warships  and  Flying  Boats 

463 

XXIV. 

Toxic  Gases      ...... 

488 

XXV. 

Gas  Masks         ...... 

509 

XXVI. 

General  Engineering  Supplies 

538 

XXVII. 

Listening  Gear  and  Searchlights  . 

55S 

XXVIII. 

Signal  Material           ..... 

566 

XXIX. 

Food         ....... 

.      587 

XXX. 

Clothing  and  Equipage        .... 

610 

XXXI. 

Miscellaneous  Quartermaster  Undertakings    . 

639 

XXXII. 

Vehicles    ....... 

.      662 

XXXIII. 

Medical  Supplies        ..... 

677 

XXXIV. 

Index 

America's  Industrial  Role    .... 

.      684 
.      69c 

ILLUSTRATIONS 


Railway  Gun  in  Action 

A  Gas  Attack     ....... 

Munitions  and  Navy  Buildings,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Making  Liberty  Engine  Cylinders 

The  War  Council       ...... 

American-built  Ordnance  at  Aberdeen,  Maryland 

Interior  of  a  Great  Shell  Factory 

8-inch  Howitzers  Built  in  America     . 

Caissons  Parked  in  Proving  Ground   . 

Charging  Floor  of  an  Open  Hearth  Furnace  Building 

Big  Guns  Ready  to  be  Shipped  . 

Ladle  Receiving  Molten  Steel    . 

Casting  Gun  Ingot     ..... 

Hydraulic  Forging  Press  in  Gun  Plant     . 

155-millimeter  Gun  Tubes  Ready  for  Heating 

Boring  240-millimeter  Recuperators    . 

Shop  in  War  Ordnance   Plant   . 

In  the   155-millimeter  Recuperator  Plant   . 

Making  240-millimeter  Recuperators  . 

French  75  Made  in  U.  S.  A. 

American-built    155-millimeter   Gun    . 

75-millimeter  Carriages  Ready  for  Wheels 

Assembling  75-millimeter  Gun  Carriages   . 

Erecting  Trails  for  155-millimeter  Howitzer  Carriages 

Manufacturing  Carriages  for  155-millimeter  Howitzers 

The  240-millimeter  Howitzer     . 

Completed  75-millimeter  Gun  Carriages 

Caissons  on  Shipping  Platform  . 

Shipping  75-millimeter  Gun  Carriages 

The  American  7-inch  Railway  Gun   . 

8-inch  Railway  Gun   .... 

12-inch  Rifle  on  Sliding  Railway  Mount 

The  16-inch  Howitzer 

Emplacement  of  German  Long-range  Gun 

U.  S.  Naval  Battery  No.  1  Speaks     . 

Havoc  Wrought  by  U.  S.  Naval  Gun  at  Laon 

1400-pound  Projectiles  Fired  by  Naval  Railway  Guns 

3-inch  Gun  on  Self-propelled  Mount 

8-inch  Howitzer  Climbing  Railroad  Embankment 

The  Navy's  Caterpillar  Mount  .... 

^Yz-ton  Artillery  Tractor  ..... 


Frontispiece,  Vol.  I 
Frontispiece,  Vol.  II 
Opposite  page  12 
12 
13 
32 
32 
33 
33 
46 
46 
47 
47 
56 
56 
51 
57 
66 
66 
67 
67 
82 
82 
83 
83 
96 
96 
97 
97 
no 
no 
111 
111 
124 
124 
125 
125 
132 
>32 
133 
133 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


5-ton  Artillery  Tractor       ...... 

20-ton   Artillery   Tractor 

Grinding  Lenses  and  Prisms       ..... 

Manufacturing   Trench   Periscopes      .... 

Smokeless  Powder  on  Conveyor  at  Powder  Factory   . 
Casting  Shell  in  Flasks       ...... 

Furnaces  and  Quenching  Tanks  for  Heat-treating  Shell 
Rough-turning  Nose  of  8-inch  Shell  .... 

Machining  Room  in  Shell  Plant         .... 

Completing  Manufacture   of  Shell      .... 

Shell,  without  Fuses,  ready  for  Government  Inspection 
Shell  Ready  for  Packing  and  Shipment 
Renault-type  6-ton   Tank    ...... 

American  Mark  VIII  Tank  Fording  Stream 
The  Anglo-American  Tank  (Tonirnission 
American  Mark  VIII  Tank  Topping  a  Hill 
Assembling  Mark  VIII  Tanks  in  Rock  Island  Arsenal 
Marlin   Synchronized  Aircraft  Gun    .... 

Benct-Mercie    Machine    Rifle      ..... 

Chauchat  Automatic  Rifle   ...... 

The  Browning  Heavy  Machine  Gun 

Assembling  Tripods  for  Browning  Machine  Guns 

Browning   Light  Automatic   Rifle        .... 

Lewis  Machine  Gun,  Ground  Type   .... 

Hotchkiss  Heavy  Machine  Gun  .... 

Straightening  Rifle   Barrels  ..... 

Walnut  Logs  to  be  Made  into  Rifle  Stocks 
Part  of  Factory   Making   Pistols   for  Army 
Machining  Rough  Pistol  Castings       .... 

Types  of  Small-arms  Ammunition      .... 

Woman  Worker  in  Small-arms  Ammunition  Factory  . 
Hand    Grenades         ....... 

Waterproofing  Rifle   Grenades   ..... 

Vertical  Cross  Section  of  Livens  Projector 

Manufacturing  Trench  Mortar  Shell 

6-inch  Trench  Mortar         ...... 

Firing  3-inch  Mortar  ...... 

6-inch  Trench  Mortar  Shell        ..... 

240-millimeter  Trench  Mortar  with  Shell  Ready  for  Action 
War  Plant  Engaged  in  Manufacture  of  Trench  Mortars 
Assembling  Large  Trench   Mortars    . 
American  Armor         ..... 

Two  Views  of  American  Experimental  Helmet 
Manufacturing   Bayonets    .... 

Making   Trench   Knives      .... 

The  3-inch,  23-caliber  Boat  Gun 

War  Ordnance  Shop  Crowded  with  Navy  Work 

Naval  8-inch  Howitzer       ..... 


Opposite  page  142 

142 

"   143 

"   143 

164 

164 

"   165 

"   165 

"   182 

"   182 

"   183 

"   183 

"    "   196 

"    "   196 

"   197 

"     "   200 

200 

"     "   201 

"     "   201 

201 

"   218 

"   218 

219 

"     "   219 

"     "   219 

"   238 

"   238 

"   239 

"   239 

256 

256 

"    257 

"   257 

"     "   270 

"     "   270 

"   271 

"   271 

"   278 

"   278 

"   279 

"   279 

"     "   292 

292 

"   293 

"   293 

"   306 

"   306 

"   307 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


XI 


and 


Depth-charge  Launching  Gear   . 

Mark  VI  Mine  Resting  on  Anchor     . 

American  Mine  Anchor  Open  to  Show  Drum 

Explosion  of  Depth  Charge 

American  Mine  Squadron  Planting  Northern 

Manufacturing   Airplane   Wings 

In  the  Dayton-Wright  Airplane  Factory   . 

Wings  for  De  Haviland  Planes 

Panel  Department  in  Great  Airplane  Factory 

Seaming  Fabric  for  Wings 

Assembling  Engines  in  Fuselages 

Applying  Dope  to  Wing  Fabric 

Building  Fuselages  at  Curtiss   Plant 

The   U.  S.   De   Haviland  9-A    . 

Airplanes  Ready  for  Shipment  from  Factory 

Stenciling  Insignia  on  Wing  Panels  . 

Airplanes  on  Texas  Flying  Field 

The    Martin    Bomber        .... 

Fitting  Out  Lepere  Biplanes 

Army  Airplanes  over  San  Diego 

German  Armored  Plane  Shot  Down  in  France 

Forgings  for  Liberty  Engine  Cylinders 

Girl  Student  Mechanics  at  Engine  Plant  . 

Liberty  Engines  Moving  down  Assembling  Line 

Adjusting  Ignition  System  of  Liberty  Engines 

Testing   Field   for  Liberty   Engines    . 

Liberty  Engines  Ready  for  Shipment 

Unveiling  the  Ten  Thousandth  Liberty  Engine 

Installing  Liberty  Engines  in  Lepere  Fuselages 

Assembling   Curtiss   "OX"   Engines    . 

Machining  Small  Parts  for  "OX"  Engines 

Installing  Hall-Scott  Engines  in  Training  Planes 

Manufacturing  Parts  for  Airplane  Engines 

Foundry  in  Aerial  Bomb  Plant  . 

Presses  Used  in  Making  Drop  Bombs 

Making  Incendiary  Bombs 

Machining  Airplane  Bombs 

Welding  Nose  Castings  on  Drop   Bombs 

1,000-pound  and  550-pound  Airplane  Bombs 

Oxygen  Helmet  with  Telephone  Attachment 

Inspecting  Airplane  Drop  Bombs 

Aviators  Wearing  Telephone   Head  Sets   . 

Airplane  Radio  Telephone  Set  . 

Women  Workers  in  War  Balloon  Factory 

Rubberizing    Balloon    Cloth 

Cutting  and  Cementing  Balloon  Cloth  Panels 

Assembling   Balloons  .... 

American   Caquot   Balloon   Ascending 


Cable 
Barrage 


Opposite  page  307 

"  320 

"  320 

"  321 

"  321 

"  332 

"  332 

"  333 

"  333 

"  340 

"  340 

"  341 

"  341 

"  350 

"  350 

"  351 

"  351 

"  360 

"  360 

"  361 

"  361 

"  368 

"  368 

"  369 

"  369 

"  380 

"  380 

"  381 

"  381 

"  390 

"  390 

"  391 

"  391 
410 

"          "  410 

"  411 

"  411 

"  430 

"  430 

"  431 

"  431 

"  446 

"  446 

"  447 

"  447 

"  456 

"  456 

"  457 


xii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

American  Windlass  for  Observation  Balloon     . 
Building  Destroyer  in  Covered  Slip  at  Squantum 
Building  an  Eagle   Boat     . 
A  Submarine  Chaser  .... 

Eagle  Boats  on  River  Rouge,  Detroit 
An  HS-2  Seaplane      .... 

Paravanes   in   Operation 

Navy  Dirigible  of  B  Class 

The  NC-4  at  Fayal,  Azores 

Chlorpicrin  Plant  at  Edgewood  Arsenal 

One  of  Eight  Cell  Rooms  in  Edgewood  Chlorine  Plant 

Filling   1-ton  Containers  with  Phosgene      . 

Filled  Gas  Shell  and  Drums  Stored  for  Leakage  Test 

Filling  75-millimeter  Shell  with  Mustard  Gas   . 

Filling  Livens  Drums  with   Phosgene 

Gas  Cloud  from  Bursting  Gas  Shell 

Painting  Gas  Shell  to  Denote  Contents     . 

Employees  at  Government  Gas  Mask  Factory   . 

Masks   Worn   in   World   War    ..... 

Sewing  Room  in  Mask  Factory  .... 

Assembling    Gas    Masks      ...... 

Mountain  of  Apricot  Pits  at  San  Francisco  Carbon  Plant 
Five  Thousand  Tons  of  Peach  Stones  for  Mask  Carbon 
The  American  K-T  Mask  ..... 

Type  of  Mask  Chiefly  Worn  by  A.  E.  F.  . 
American  Ration  Train  in  France      .... 

Locomotives  on  Wheels  Packed  in  Transport 

Narrow-gauge  Steam  Locomotive  Supplied  to  A.  E.  F. 

Narrow-gauge  Gasoline  Locomotive  Supplied  to  A.  E.  F. 

Army   Mobile   Machine   Shop 

Armored  Car  with   Gun  and  Searchlight 

Surface   Sound-ranging  Set 

Geophone    ...... 

Microphone  .... 

"The  End  of  the  War"       . 
American   Parabloid    .... 

6o-inch   Portable  Open-type  Searchlight 
6o-inch    Seacoast-type    Searchlight 
Military  Telephone  School  at  University 
Signal  Equipment  Installed  in  Dugout 
Soldiers  Studying  Printing  Telegraph 
Field  Work  with  Radio      . 
Hash   for   Soldiers 
Canning  Fruit  for  the  Army 
The  Home  of  "Corned  Willie" 
Packing  Tobacco  on  Army  Orders 
Outfit  Worn  by  American  Troops  in  Siberia 
Reclaimed    Army    Shoes      .... 


of  Michigan 


Opposite  page  457 

"  468 

"  468 

"  469 

"  469 

"  482 

"  482 

"  483 

"  483 

"  494 

"  494 

"  495 

"  495 

"  504 

"  504 

"  505 

"  505 

"  518 

"  5»8 

"  519 

"  519 

"  530 

"  530 

"  531 

"  531 

"  544 

"  544 

"  545 

"  545 

"  554 

"  554 

"  S5S 

"  SS5 

"  555 
562 
562 

"  563 

"  563 

"  574 

"  574 

"  575 

"  575 

"  598 

"  598 

"  599 

"  599 
622 

"    "  622 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Xlll 


Making  Overseas   Caps 

In  a  Uniform   Factory 

Crated    Caissons 

Park  of  American  Rolling  Kitchens 

Army  Horse  Collars  in  Storage  . 

Method  of  Storing  Rolling  Kitchens 

Storage   of  Chassis 

Making  Steel  Wheels  for  Artillery  Trucks 

War-built  Wagon  Wheels  in  Storage 

Army  Wagon  Bodies  Ready  for  Shipment 


Opposite  page  623 
623 
650 
650 
651 
651 
672 
672 
673 
673 


FIGURES 

Page 

1.  Actual  Troop  Sailings  Compared  with  Programs         .  .         .  xx 

2.  British  and  American  Expeditionary  Forces  on  Western  Front  .  xxi 

3.  Organization  of  War  Department  in  1917   .....  3 

4.  Organization  of  War  Department  in  1918  .....  7 

5.  Organization  of  War  Department  under  Act  of  June  4,  1920       .  17 

6.  Expenditure  of  Artillery  Ammunition  in  Modern  Battles   .         .  27 

7.  Rates  of  Artillery  Fire  per  Gun  per  Day  in  Recent  Wars  .          .  29 

8.  Expenditure  of  Artillery  Ammunition  in  Recent  Wars       .          .  31 

9.  Comparative  Production  of  Rifles,  Machine  Guns,  Ammunition  .  34 

10.  Comparative  Production  of  Artillery  Ammunition       ...  36 

11.  Rounds  of  Artillery  Ammunition  Produced  Each  Month   .         .  37 

12.  Units  of  Mobile  Artillery  Produced  Each  Month       ...  38 

13.  Comparative  Production  of  Artillery  ......  40 

14.  Comparative   Production  of  Explosives       .....  155 

15.  Improvement  of  Field  Guns  Since  Napoleonic  Wars  .          .          .  188 

16.  De  Haviland-4  Airplanes  Produced  Each  Month  during  1918     .  348 

17.  U.  S.  Airplane  Squadrons  at  the  Front       .....  360 

18.  Liberty  Engines  Produced  Each  Month  during  1918   .          .         .  380 


MAP 


The  Shelling  of  Paris 


Opposite  page  118 


INTRODUCTION 

A  S  we  look  back  at  it  now,  our  war  against  Germany  is 
/-%  beginning  to  draw  into  focus  as  it  recedes  down  the 
JL  jL.  corridor  of  time.  That  which  only  a  brief  space  ago 
seemed  to  the  world  an  interminable  agony,  running  without 
hope  of  end,  now  is  seen  to  have  been  not  an  indefinite  thing 
after  all.  It  had  boundaries,  limits,  a  beginning  and  an  end; 
and  for  us  the  beginning  and  the  end  were  the  6th  of  April, 
1917,  and  the  11th  of  November,  1918. 

Here,  then,  was  our  war,  the  greatest  in  which  we  ever 
engaged — a  few  days  more  than  nineteen  months  of  it.  For 
that  struggle  we  marshaled  our  resources  as  they  had  never 
been  mobilized  before.  What  showing  did  our  resources  make, 
our  magnificent  industrial  resources,  in  that  war,  in  those  nine- 
teen months  and  five  days?  What  weight  of  American  artillery 
did  they  put  on  the  front*?  How  many  airplanes  and  machine 
guns  and  high-explosive  shell  did  they  materialize,  in  that 
war  of  the  definite  beginning  and  the  definite  ending  that  now 
seems  almost  to  have  been  predestined,  if  it  were  not  actually 
foretell  able  by  human  judgment? 

The  answers  to  some  of  these  questions  are  disappointing; 
and  the  critic  who  adopts  the  censorious  point  of  view  can 
make  an  impressive  argument.  But  that  is  neither  the  fair  nor 
the  intelligent  way  of  looking  at  the  results  of  our  munitions 
production  in  the  World  War.  To  gain  a  correct  judgment  of 
the  industrial  effort  one  must  relive  in  imagination  those 
months  of  suspense  during  most  of  which  there  was  not  the 
faintest  paling  of  the  darkness  to  foretoken  the  dawn  of  peace 
and  victory.  Then  one  can  understand  why  America  in  her  war 
industry  strained  every  energy  toward  an  ambition  that  was 
little  concerned  with  the  year  1918;  toward  an  indomitable 
purpose  which  admittedly  did  not  bring  the  full  weight  of 
American   materiel  into   the   struggle   even   in    1919;   which 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

rather  left  it  for  1920,  if  the  enemy  should  not  yet  have  suc- 
cumbed to  the  crushing  American  power,  to  witness  the  maxi- 
mum strength  in  the  held  of  which  the  United  States  was 
capable. 

Therefore  we  find  the  actual  period  of  hostilities — the  period 
between  April  6,  1917,  and  November  11,  1918 — devoted  to 
building  the  foundations  of  a  munitions  industry  that  should 
be  big  enough  to  accomplish  this  overwhelming  result.  We 
might  have  made  a  better  showing  with  our  finished  war  mate- 
rials, we  might  have  aimed  at  a  quick  victory — and  we  might 
have  failed.  We  did  not  take  this  course.  America  demanded 
the  insurance  that  existed  in  the  complete  utilization  of  all 
her  resources;  and  in  the  progress  of  welding  those  resources 
into  a  single  vast  war  machine,  such  munitions  of  the  more 
diflficult  sort  as  were  actually  produced  may  almost  be  regarded 
as  casual  to  the  main  enterprise — mere  harbingers  of  the 
quantities  to  come. 

The  decision  to  prepare  heavily  for  1919  and  1920  and  thus 
sacrifice  in  1917  and  1918  the  munitions  which  could  have 
been  produced  at  the  cost  of  a  less  adequate  fundamental  prep- 
aration, was  based  on  sound  strategical  reasoning  on  the  part  of 
the  Allies  and  ourselves.  Looking  back  at  the  past,  we  find 
that  on  April  6,  1917,  the  United  States  scarcely  realized  the 
gravity  of  what  she  was  undertaking  to  do.  There  was  a 
general  impression,  reaching  even  into  Government,  that  the 
Allies  alone  were  competent  to  defeat  the  Central  Powers  in 
time,  and  that  America's  part  would  be  largely  one  of  moral 
support,  with  expanding  preparation  in  the  background  as 
insurance  against  any  unforeseen  disasters.  In  conformity  with 
this  attitude  we  sent  the  first  division  of  American  troops  to 
France,  in  the  spring  of  1917,  to  be  our  earnest  to  the  gov- 
ernments and  peoples  of  the  Allies  that  we  were  with  them  in 
the  great  struggle.  Not  until  after  the  departure  of  the  various 
foreign  missions  which  came  to  this  country  during  that  spring 
did  America  fully  awake  to  the  seriousness  of  the  situation. 

All  through  the  summer  of  1917  the  emphasis  upon  Ameri- 
can man  power  in  France  gradually  grew;  but  no  definite 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

schedule  upon  which  the  United  States  could  work  was  reached 
until  autumn  or  early  winter,  when  the  mission  headed  by- 
Colonel  Edward  M.  House  visited  Europe  to  give  America 
place  on  the  Supreme  War  Council  and  in  the  Interallied  Con- 
ference. The  purpose  of  the  House  mission  was  to  assure  the 
Allies  that  America  was  in  the  war  for  all  she  was  worth  and 
to  determine  the  most  effective  method  in  which  she  could 
cooperate. 

In  the  conferences  in  London  and  Paris  the  American  repre- 
sentatives looked  into  the  minds  of  the  Allied  leaders  and  saw 
the  situation  as  it  was.  Two  dramatic  factors  colored  all  the 
discussions — the  growing  need  for  men  and  the  gravity  of  the 
shipping  situation.  The  German  submarines  were  operating  so 
effectively  as  to  turn  exceedingly  dark  the  outlook  for  the 
transport  on  a  sufficient  scale  of  either  American  troops  or 
American  munitions. 

As  to  man  power,  the  Supreme  War  Council  gave  it  as  the 
judgment  of  the  military  leaders  of  the  Allies  that,  if  the  day 
were  to  be  saved,  America  must  send  1,000,000  troops  by  the 
following  July.  There  were  in  France  then  (on  December  1, 
1917)  parts  of  four  divisions  of  American  soldiers — 129,000 
men  in  all. 

The  program  of  American  cooperation,  as  it  crystallized  in 
these  conferences,  may  be  summarized  as  follows : 

1.  To  keep  the  Allies  from  starvation  by  shipping  food. 

2.  To  assist  the  Allied  armies  by  keeping  up  the  flow  of 
materiel  already  in  production  for  them  in  the  United  States. 

3.  To  send  as  many  men  as  could  be  transported  with  the 
shipping  facilities  then  at  America's  command. 

4.  To  bend  energies  toward  a  big  American  Army  in  1919, 
equipped  with  American  supplies. 

This  general  agreement  or  program  was  a  most  practical 
proposition,  based  on  things  as  they  were  and  not  as  they 
might  have  been.  The  negotiators  looked  at  the  situation  with 
their  eyes  wide  open.  At  an  earlier  point  in  this  record*  we 
have  maintained  the  thesis  that,  due  to  the  failure  of  those 

*  See  Authors'  Foreword,  The  Giant  Hand. 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

in  authority  to  provide  an  effective  form  of  organization  for 
the  War  Department,  the  first  six  months  of  the  manufactur- 
ing program  were  largely  futile,  wasted,  and  abortive,  and 
that  in  consequence  the  general  munitions-production  curve 
was  always  at  least  half  a  year  below  what  it  should  have  been. 
Had  the  industrial  situation  been  different  in  the  fall  of  1917, 
if  the  war  industry  had  then  been  reaching  the  production  stage 
in  the  more  difficult  and  important  branches  of  supply,  instead 
of  being,  as  it  was,  still  in  the  planning,  development,  and 
preparatory  stage,  no  doubt  the  Allies  would  have  asked 
America  to  play  a  part  even  more  significant  than  the  one  as 
outlined  above.  The  hope  of  victory  might  not  have  been  so 
long  deferred. 

In  the  conferences  which  laid  down  the  first  concerted  pro- 
gram of  American  cooperation  sat  the  chief  military  and 
political  figures  of  the  principal  European  powers  at  war  with 
Germany.  In  the  Supreme  War  Council  were  such  strategists 
as  General  Foch  for  the  French  and  General  Robertson  for 
,  the  British,  General  Bliss  representing  the  United  States.  The 
president  of  the  Interallied  Conference  was  M.  Clemenceau, 
the  French  prime  minister.  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  the  min- 
ister of  munitions,  represented  Great  Britain.  Mr.  Lloyd- 
George,  the  Prime  Minister  of  England,  also  participated  to 
some  extent  in  the  conferences. 

Out  of  such  men  and  such  minds  came  the  Interallied 
Ordnance  Agreement.  It  will  be  evident  to  the  reader  that  this 
agreement  must  have  represented  the  best  opinion  of  the  lead- 
ers of  the  principal  Allies.  It  was  developed  out  of  their  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  needs  of  the  situation  and  concurred  in 
by  the  representatives  of  the  United  States.  The  substance  of 
this  agreement  was  outlined  for  Washington  in  a  cabled  mes- 
sage signed  by  General  Bliss,  of  which  the  more  important 
passages  are  set  down  at  this  point : 

The  representatives  of  Great  Britain  and  France  state  that  their 
production  of  artillery  (field,  medium,  and  heavy)  is  now  established 
on  so  large  a  scale  that  they  are  able  to  equip  completely  all  American 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

divisions  as  they  arrive  in  France  during  the  year  1918  with  the  best 
make  of  British  and  French  guns  and  howitzers. 

The  British  and  French  ammunition  supply  and  reserves  are  suffi- 
cient to  provide  the  requirements  of  the  American  Army  thus  equipped 
at  least  up  to  June,  1918,  provided  that  the  existing  6-inch  shell  plants 
in  the  United  States  and  Dominion  of  Canada  are  maintained  in  full 
activity,  and  provided  that  the  manufacture  of  6-inch  howitzer  carriages 
in  the  United  States  is  to  some  extent  sufficiently  developed. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  French,  and  to  a  lesser  extent  the  British, 
require  as  soon  as  possible  large  supplies  of  propellants  and  high  explo- 
sives :  and  the  British  require  the  largest  possible  production  of  6-inch 
howitzers  from  now  onward  and  of  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  shell  from  June 
onward. 

In  both  of  these  matters  they  ask  the  assistance  of  the  Americans. 

With  a  view,  therefore,  first  to  expedite  and  facilitate  the  equipment 
of  the  American  armies  in  France,  and,  second,  to  secure  the  maximum 
ultimate  development  of  the  ammunition  supply  with  the  minimum 
strain  upon  available  tonnage,  the  representatives  of  Great  Britain  and 
France  propose  that  the  American  field,  medium,  and  heavy  artillery 
be  supplied  during  1918,  and  as  long  after  as  may  be  found  convenient, 
from  British  and  French  gun  factories;  and  they  ask:  (a)  That  the 
American  efforts  shall  be  immediately  directed  to  the  production  of 
propellants  and  high  explosives  on  the  largest  possible  scale;  and 
(b)  Great  Britain  also  asks  that  the  6-inch,  8-inch,  and  9.2-inch  shell 
plants  already  created  for  the  British  service  in  the  United  States  shall 
be  maintained  in  the  highest  activity,  and  that  large  additional  plants 
for  the  manufacture  of  these  shell  shall  at  once  be  laid  down. 

In  this  way  alone  can  the  tonnage  difficulty  be  minimized  and  poten- 
tial artillery  development,  both  in  guns  and  shell,  of  the  combined 
French,  British,  and  American  armies  be  maintained  in  1918  and  still 
more  in  1919. 

This  agreement  had  a  profound  effect  upon  American  pro- 
duction of  munitions.  Most  important  of  all,  it  gave  us  time — 
time  to  build  manufacturing  capacity  on  a  grand  scale  without 
the  hampering  necessity  for  immediate  production;  time  to 
secure  the  best  in  design;  time  to  attain  quality  in  the  enor- 
mous output  to  come  later,  as  opposed  to  early  quantity  of 
indifferent  class. 

In  the  late  autumn  of  1917,  shortly  after  Russia  collapsed 
and  withdrew  from  the  war,  it  became  evident  that  Germany- 
would  seize  the  opportunity  to  move  her  troops  from  the  east- 


XX 


INTRODUCTION 


ern  front  and  concentrate  her  entire  army  against  the  French 
and  British  in  1918.  This  intelligence  at  once  resulted  in  fresh 
emphasis  upon  the  man-power  phase  of  American  cooperation. 
As  early  as  December,  1917,  the  War  Department  was  antici- 
pating the  extraordinary  need  for  men  in  the  coming  spring  by 
considering  plans  for  the  transport  of  troops  up  to  the  sup- 
posed limit  of  the  capacity  of  all  available  American  ships, 


FIGURE  1 

Actual  Troop  failings  Compared  with, 
Programs 


Men 

2,500,000 

2,000,000 

1,600,000 

1,000,000 

500,000 


_^ 

^  2,087,000 

.^/ 

y 

^^V 

M  ., 

A 

^-1,647,000 

/ 

4t^? 

,.1^0,000 
,^  1,157,000 

// 

gc*^'^  .-i^ 

l> 

y 

/. 

^^^l 

.^^' 

^ 

/< 

.--" 

'^ 

Jan.    Feb.    Mar.    Apr.    May    Jun.    JuL    Aug.    Sep.    Oct    Nov.    Dec. 


with  what  additional  tonnage  Great  Britain  and  the  other 
Allies  could  spare  us.  It  is  of  record  that  the  actual  dispatch 
of  troops  to  France  far  outstripped  these  early  estimates. 

Then  came  the  long-expected  German  offensive,  and  the  cry 
went  up  in  Europe  for  men.  England,  her  back  against  the 
wall,  offered  additional  ships  in  which  to  transport  six  divi- 
sions over  and  above  the  number  of  troops  already  scheduled 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

for  embarkation,  agreeing  further  to  feed  and  maintain  these 
men  for  ten  weeks  while  they  were  brigaded  with  British  units 
for  final  training.  After  the  six  additional  divisions  had  em- 
barked there  was  still  need  of  men,  and  the  British  continued 
their  transports  in  our  service.  The  high  mark  of  shipment 
was  reached  in  July,  when  306,000  American  soldiers  were 


FIGURE  2 

British  and  American  ^expeditionary  Forces 

on  Western  Front 

Troops 

2,000,000 
1,500,000 
1,000,000 

/ 
/ 
/ 

/ 

'^ 

\ 

-  — 

— 

1 

1 

/ 
/ 
/ 
/ 

--  — 

' 

/ 
/ 
/ 

/ 

SI 

500,000 

y 

y^ 

1915                         1916                         1917                         1918 

transported  across  the  Atlantic — more  than  three  times  the 
number  contemplated  for  July  in  the  schedule  adopted  six 
months  earlier ! 

The  effect  of  this  stepping-up  of  the  man-power  program 
upon  the  shipment  of  supplies  was  described  by  Lieutenant 
Colonel  Repington,  the  British  military  critic,  writing  in  the 
Morning  Post  (London)  on  December  9,  1918,  in  part  as 
follows : 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

.  .  .  they  [the  British  war  cabinet]  also  prayed  America  in  aid,  im- 
plored her  to  send  in  haste  all  available  infantry  and  machine  guns,  and 
placed  at  her  disposal,  to  her  great  surprise,  a  large  amount  of  trans- 
ports to  hasten  arrivals.  ... 

The  American  Government  acceded  to  this  request  in  the  most  loyal 
and  generous  manner.  Assured  by  their  Allies  in  France  that  the  latter 
could  fit  out  the  American  infantry  divisions  on  their  arrival  with  guns, 
horses,  and  transport,  the  Americans  packed  their  infantry  tightly  in 
the  ships  and  left  to  a  later  occasion  the  dispatch  to  France  of  guns, 
horses,  transport,  labor  units,  flying  service,  rolling  stock,  and  a  score 
of  other  things  originally  destined  for  transport  with  the  divisions.  If 
subsequently — and  indeed  up  to  the  day  that  the  armistice  was  signed — 
General  Pershing  found  himself  short  of  many  indispensable  things, 
and  if  his  operations  were  thereby  conducted  under  real  difficulties  of 
which  he  must  have  been  only  too  sensible,  the  defects  were  not  due  to 
him  and  his  staff,  nor  to  the  Washington  administration  .  .  .  but 
solely  to  the  self-sacrificing  manner  in  which  America  had  responded 
to  the  call  of  her  friends. 

The  really  amazing  thing  which  America  did  was  to  place 
in  France  in  nineteen  months  an  army  of  the  size  and  ability 
of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  The  war  taught  us  that 
America  can  organize,  train,  and  transport  troops  of  a  supe- 
rior sort  at  a  rate  which  leaves  far  behind  any  practicable 
program  for  the  manufacture  of  munitions.  It  upset  the  pre- 
vious opinion  that  adequate  military  preparedness  is  largely 
a  question  of  trained  man  power. 

When  the  war  touched  us,  our  strategical  equipment 
included  plans  ready  drawn  for  the  mobilization  of  men. 
There  were  on  file  at  the  Army  War  College  in  Washington 
detailed  plans  for  defending  our  harbors,  coasts,  and  borders. 
There  were  also  certain  plans  for  the  training  of  new  troops. 
It  is  worthy  of  note,  however,  that  this  equipment  included  no 
plan  for  the  equally  important  and  equally  necessary  mobiliza- 
tion of  industry  and  production  of  munitions,  which  proved 
to  be  the  most  difficult  phase  of  the  actual  preparation  for 
war.  The  experience  of  1917  and  1918  was  a  lesson  in  the  time 
it  takes  to  determine  types,  create  designs,  provide  facilities, 
and  establish  manufacture.  These  years  will  forever  stand 
as  the  most  signal  monument  to  the  American  genius  of  work- 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

shop  and  factory,  which  in  this  period  ensured  the  victory  by 
ensuring  the  timely  arrival  of  the  overwhelming  force  of 
America's  resources  in  the  form  of  America's  munitions. 

B.  C.  &  R.  F.  W. 

Washington,  D.  C, 
June,  ig2i. 


PREFACE 

MUCH  of  the  text  of  this  account  of  the  production 
of  American  munitions  during  the  World  War  was 
published  by  the  War  Department  as  the  report  of 
Benedict  Crowell,  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  and  Director 
of  Munitions  in  the  War  Government.  The  authors  of  the 
report  were  four — the  two  who  have  signed  this  revision  and 
Messrs.  Robert  J.  Bulkley  and  Benjamin  E.  Ling,  both  of 
Cleveland.  Mr.  Bulkley,  a  former  member  of  Congress,  served 
in  the  War  Department  as  a  "doUar-a-year  man."  Mr.  Ling 
was  formerly  a  captain  in  the  Construction  Division,  United 
States  Army.  In  the  preparation  of  the  report  the  authors  were 
assisted  by  about  one  hundred  officers  and  civilian  officials 
who  compiled  data  and  checked  the  accuracy  of  statement  in 
the  manuscript. 

In  substance,  and  to  a  considerable  extent  in  text,  this  report 
has  been  embodied  in  the  chapters  that  follow.  Certain  chap- 
ters, however,  that  dealt  with  subjects  not  strictly  related  to 
domestic  munitions  production  have  been  dropped.  When  the 
original  report  was  prepared,  final  production  figures  either 
did  not  exist  or  were  of  questionable  accuracy.  The  statistical 
tables  which  appear  in  the  present  revision  have  been  corrected 
in  the  light  of  later  official  information,  and  for  the  more 
important  munitions  items  they  tell  the  complete  tale.  Some 
few  errors  of  fact  inevitably  crept  into  the  original  report.  In 
so  far  as  they  have  been  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  authors, 
these  mistakes  have  been  corrected.  Considerable  new  material 
has  been  added,  notably  the  section  dealing  with  the  evolution 
of  the  War  Department's  internal  organization  during  the 
war  and  those  which  summarize  the  activities  of  the  Navy 
Department  in  the  production  of  war  vessels  and  supplies;  an 
index  has  been  supplied;  and  the  whole  text  has  been  edited 
and  somewhat  rearranged. 


THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


CHAPTER  I 
WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION 

THE  most  important  forward  step  taken  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  supplies  which  were  the  fruition  of  the 
nation's  whole  industrial  program  during  the  World 
War  was  an  act  which  might  not  ordinarily  be  considered  a 
part  of  the  production  process  at  all.  This  step  had  nothing 
to  do  with  machinery  or  materials,  with  designs  or  specifica- 
tions, with  labor  or  transportation.  Yet  it  was  as  truly  a  part 
of  the  process  of  turning  out  guns,  ammunition,  and  airplanes 
as  were  the  procurement  of  machine  tools  and  the  erection  of 
factory  buildings.  It  was  even  more  essential  to  the  program 
than  these  tangible  things;  because,  before  the  step  was  taken, 
we  had  spent  many  millions  of  dollars  for  ores,  metals, 
machinery,  and  buildings,  and  the  millions  had  apparently 
gone  into  a  hole  from  which  few  supplies  had  issued.  The 
great  paraphernalia  of  manufacture  with  which  the  Govern- 
ment was  providing  itself,  at  such  cost  and  with  such  effort, 
seemed  to  be  a  futile  implement  in  our  hands,  unresponsive  to 
all  the  driving  force  which  the  combined  industrial  talent  of 
the  country  could  put  behind  it — until,  in  a  few  quiet  offices 
in  Washington,  there  was  brought  about,  somewhat  tardily, 
to  be  sure,  a  relatively  simple  rearrangement  of  executive 
functions,  a  realignment  of  them,  a  creation  of  new  channels 
for  the  flow  of  authority.  And  then,  although  there  was  little 
disturbance  to  the  existing  personnel^  the  reorganization  of  the 
business  administration  of  the  War  Department  made  the 
industrial  equipment  effective  at  last  and  brought  success  out 
of  failure.  The  part  it  played  in  bringing  about  the  fall  of  the 
German  Empire  has  perhaps  not  been  justly  estimated. 

It  is  given  to  only  a  few  men  to  have  executive  part  in  great 


2  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

affairs.  A  good  half  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  are 
engaged  in  individual  enterprises — they  are  farmers,  lawyers, 
doctors,  storekeepers — and  nine-tenths  of  the  rest  are  cogs  in 
big  machines,  not  only  unconcerned  with  the  intricacies  of 
management,  but  sometimes  even  contemptuous  of  them.  Some 
of  our  so-called  advanced  thinkers  hold  that  the  cogs  are, 
after  all,  the  important  things  in  the  machine — once  you  turn 
on  the  power  the  thing  will  run  of  itself.  "Let  the  directors  in 
New  York  solemnly  meet  and  agitate  themselves  with  their 
organization  schemes  in  the  delusion  that  they  are  producers 
and  valuable  members  of  society," — so  runs  the  modem  argu- 
ment,— "but  what  do  they  know  about  industry  and  produc- 
tion? The  real  worker,  the  man  who  keeps  the  wheels  turning, 
is  the  man  out  there  on  the  job;  and  things  would  run  along 
pretty  much  the  same  if  all  the  executive  offices  in  the  world 
were  wiped  out  at  once.  Industry  would  go  right  ahead  pro- 
ducing necessities  at  its  same  rate  and  with  no  loss  of 
efficiency." 

If  there  be  readers  of  this  book  who  entertain  such  views, 
their  attention  is  invited  to  an  adjoining  chart  (Figure  3) 
which  shows  the  organization  of  the  War  Department  from 
the  declaration  of  war  in  the  spring  of  1917  until  January, 
1918.  It  will  be  noted  that  up  to  the  date  last  mentioned  four- 
teen administrative  bureaus  reported  directly  to  the  Secretary 
of  War.  This  meant  that  fourteen  different  kinds  of  sets  of 
problems  came  up  to  him  for  decision  and  action.  Now,  this 
may  have  been  a  possible  arrangement  during  the  time  of  peace. 
But  when  the  war  came  to  expand  the  business  of  some  of 
these  bureaus  as  much  as  twenty  tirries,  it  became  physically 
impossible  for  one  man  to  look  after  so  many  affairs. 

"But  what  of  it*?" — again  we  are  paraphrasing  our 
serious  thinkers — "Everybody  knows  that  the  Secretary  of 
War  is  a  figurehead  anyhow — usually  a  lawyer  who  knows 
nothing  about  the  science  of  making  war,  but  who  is  put 
in  there  to  act  as  a  sort  of  official  yes-man  to  give  legal 
authenticity  to  the  acts  of  the  bureau  chiefs,  who  are  the  real 
organization  and  who  know  their  jobs  and  know  how  to  keep 


s 

5^ 


o 


2  s^'s 


— 

Is. 2 

1     1  IB 

— 

?1  e 
p  S  = 

— 

— 

— 

1 1 

p    c 

11 

"s  -  &■ 

4  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

things  running  from  one  administration  to  another.  Fourteen 
bureaus'?  What  difference  did  it  make — fourteen,  or  two 
dozen,  or  fifty?  As  long  as  the  Secretary  of  War  could  avoid 
writer's  cramp  everything  would  be  all  right,  wouldn't  it? 
The  bureaus  themselves  would  know  how  to  conduct  their 
own  business." 

The  complete  answer  to  these  questions  was  found  in  the 
condition  of  our  war  program  in  December,  1917.  To  those  in 
Washington,  that  month  brought  the  darkest  days  of  the  war. 
The  various  war  department  bureaus  had  indeed  known  their 
jobs,  and  known  them  only  too  well.  As  their  business  ex- 
panded, as  it  became  less  and  less  possible  to  apprise  the 
Secretary  of  War  of  what  they  were  doing,  they  grew  out  of 
touch  with  the  executive  direction  which  was  supposed  to 
exist;  and  each  production  bureau  in  its  own  province  of  indus- 
try became  virtually  a  sovereign  potentate,  unchecked,  uncon- 
trolled. They  knew  their  work  only  too  well,  and  that  work 
was  to  produce  the  supplies  for  which  each  was  charged  with 
responsibility,  and  to  get  those  supplies  to  France.  In  that 
direction  lay  success.  And  since  it  soon  became  evident  that 
the  industry  and  transportation  of  the  country  were  not  going 
to  be  sufficient  to  allow  every  bureau  to  satisfy  its  ambitions 
to  the  full,  the  proper  tactics  for  the  bureau  chief  were  to  get 
his  program  through  first  and  let  the  others  look  out  for 
themselves. 

It  was  not  as  if  only  one  or  two  bureaus  adopted  this  atti- 
tude: every  single  bureau  responsible  for  producing  supplies 
for  the  Army  conducted  its  affairs  in  just  this  spirit  of  com- 
petition. There  were  five  such  bureaus  at  first,  and  eight  later 
on,  scarcely  one  of  which  but  was  prosecuting  a  business 
greater  than  that  of  the  War  Department  as  a  whole  before 
the  declaration  of  war.  There  was  in  the  War  Department's 
organization  nothing  that  could  put  an  effective  curb  upon 
their  individualistic  operations.  Six  months  of  this  sort  of 
thing  brought  the  inevitable  consequences  which  any  good 
business  man  could  have  foreseen  from  the  start.  The  crisis 
came  in  December,  1917. 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  5 

Nature  itself  that  year  seemed  to  share  in  the  hostility  of 
the  other  inanimate  forces  which  the  Government  had  found 
it  impossible  to  control;  for  the  winter  descended  with  a 
ferocity  that  will  make  the  season  remembered  long  for  that 
reason  alone.  But  there  were  other  things  besides  the  ice  and 
the  blizzards  to  make  the  outlook  bleak  for  the  officials  in 
Washington.  The  munitions  program  was  approaching  a  state 
of  paralysis.  Certain  factories  were  loaded  with  contracts  far 
beyond  their  ability  to  obtain  materials,  labor,  transportation, 
or  new  factory  facilities.  In  like  manner  certain  whole  manu- 
facturing districts  were  so  overloaded  with  war  business  that 
their  utmost  in  facilities,  labor,  fuel,  transportation,  and 
power  was  entirely  inadequate  to  the  handling  of  the  contracts 
in  any  reasonable  time.  And  while  in  these  districts  there  was 
great  labor  scarcity,  and  while  projects  were  being  delayed  as 
a  consequence,  in  other  districts  not  so  attractive  to  the  com- 
peting war  bureaus  there  was  actual  unemployment  both  of 
men  and  of  facilities. 

The  congestion  of  war  business  within  certain  districts  was 
a  heavy  contributing  cause  of  the  fuel  shortage  that  nearly 
disrupted  industry  in  those  weeks.  The  unwise  concentration 
of  contracts  also  resulted  in  shortages  in  electric  power  in 
these  districts.  Every  bureau  dispatched  its  finished  products 
to  the  ports  as  rapidly  as  it  succeeded  in  procuring  them.  There 
the  port  officers  had  to  take  into  consideration  the  balanced 
lading  of  vessels  and  also  the  immediate  and  more  pressing 
needs  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  for  the  available  tonnage  was  scant. 
Consequently,  they  were  unable  to  ship  many  of  the  materials 
reaching  the  ports.  Army  freight  choked  the  ports  and,  back- 
ing up,  clogged  the  rails  so  far  back  from  tidewater  that 
freight  transportation  for  a  time  almost  altogether  ceased. 

The  public  began  to  hear  rumors  of  serious  failures  in  the 
program  of  supply.  Some  of  the  troops  taken  by  the  draft  and 
concentrated  in  cantonments  found  themselves  compelled  to 
drill  with  dummy  riiies  made  of  wood  instead  of  with  real 
guns.  This  was  bad  enough;  but  worse  was  the  fact  that  in 
the  camps  existed  shortages  in  clothing,  in  hospital  equipment, 


6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

and  in  other  supplies.  Pneumonia  became  epidemic  in  some 
of  the  camps,  and  it  was  openly  charged  that  the  failure  of  the 
War  Department  to  provide  sufficient  clothing  and  shelter  for 
the  troops  was  primarily  responsible  for  the  deaths  which  re- 
sulted. Because  of  the  railroad  congestion  and  the  shortage  in 
fuel,  all  but  the  most  essential  manufacturing  operations  suf- 
fered a  partial  suspension,  and  the  civil  population  shivered 
on  a  reduced  ration  of  coal.  Food  supplies  grew  short.  Ocean 
ships,  unable  to  secure  bunker  coal  promptly  in  our  ports,  were 
unable  to  operate  efficiently.  The  whole  world  was  aware  that 
the  Germans  were  planning  a  sinister  and  final  military  drive 
in  the  spring  of  1918;  and  while  we  were  doing  all  we  could 
to  send  men  to  France  to  meet  that  contingency,  there  was  in 
official  quarters  an  apprehension  that  we  might  not  be  able  to 
support  our  overseas  troops  and  those  of  the  Allies  with  food 
and  other  essential  supplies. 

That  was  what  the  original  organization  of  the  War  De- 
partment did  to  the  war  program.  That  was  the  factory  trying 
to  run  itself  without  overhead  direction  and  control.  The  War 
Department  went  along  in  this  fashion  for  about  eight  months 
after  the  declaration  of  war,  and  then  it  found  that  one  of 
two  things  had  to  happen :  either  its  whole  industrial  program 
would  go  to  smash  and  it  would  stand  forth  as  a  confessed  and 
notorious  failure,  or  it  must  reorganize.  It  chose  to  reorganize, 
and  it  began  its  reorganization  only  just  in  the  nick  of  time. 
That  reorganization  was  the  profoundest  change  in  the  War 
Department  in  modem  times;  and,  as  we  have  said  before,  it 
was  the  most  important  thing  that  could  have  happened  in 
the  production  of  our  army  supplies.  The  reorganization  began 
about  January  1,  1918. 

The  accompanying  chart  (Figure  4)  shows  what  occurred. 
In  the  first  place,  what  is  made  apparent  by  a  comparison  of  the 
two  charts  is  the  ostensible  rise  of  the  General  Staff  in  power. 
Originally  the  General  Staff  existed  on  a  plane  of  authority 
with  the  principal  bureaus  of  the  War  Department.  Although 
theoretically  it  was  supposed  to  be  the  planning  and  coordi- 
nating agency  of  the  Army,  before  the  spring  of  1917  it  had 


PC 


s 
s 


Q 


55 

O 


I  % 


^ 


r 


V 


a  3 

Is 


h  ^ 


si 


N 

a  g 

E 

t 

— 

<  I 

sf 

* 

< 

-3  s  s 

^^1 

— 

l|! 

IS? 

— 

a&  * 

^ 

— 

1  ^ 

S  5 

D 

6 

s. 

a  S 

— 

£ 

■3  jS. 

— 

II 

1  g. 

f 

^6 

^ 

p 

& 

^ 

s 

s 
e 

~ 

|3 

< 

1 

^ 

^ 



11 

I  i 

1    1  ! 

"    s  I 

6  s 


8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

never  been  able  actually  to  wrest  much  authority  away  from 
the  principal  bureaus.  But  in  the  first  months  of  the  war  the 
General  Staff  had  succeeded  in  asserting  its  power.  By  de- 
grees, yet  swiftly,  it  had  assumed  jurisdiction  over  the  raising 
and  training  of  armies;  it  had  gained,  in  fact,  complete  charge 
of  the  organization  and  movement  of  the  Army  until  it  reached 
Europe,  after  which  the  troops  came  under  the  command  of 
the  organization  of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces. 

The  significant  fact  of  the  reorganization,  the  abrupt  and 
revolutionary  development,  is  indicated  at  the  extreme  right 
of  the  chart  (Figure  4).  For  the  first  time  in  the  official  set-up 
of  military  functions,  the  industrial  side  of  waging  war  is 
accorded  its  due  weight — is  placed  on  an  equality  with  the 
function  of  supplying  trained  troops  to  the  field  commander. 
For  the  first  time,  too,  the  scattered,  but  huge,  activities  of  the 
War  Department  in  the  procurement  of  supplies  are  concen- 
trated and  included  within  a  single  overhead  business  organi- 
zation, the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic,  to  which 
the  former  autocratic  and  independent  supply  bureaus  have 
become  subsidiary.  The  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and 
Traffic  is  now  the  central  overhead  purchasing  agency  of  the 
War  Department,  supreme  in  everything  that  pertains  to  the 
effective  overhead  control  and  coordination  of  the  industrial 
enterprises  of  the  War  Department.  This,  to  be  sure,  is  control 
and  coordination  only,  but  with  the  effectiveness  of  law  behind 
it.  The  individual  supply  bureaus,  now  virtually  departments 
of  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic,  still,  but  in 
line  with  the  instructions  of  the  overhead  organization,  create 
their  designs,  write  their  contracts,  and  otherwise  attend  to  the 
concrete  acts  of  procurement. 

Had  this  organization  or  a  similar  one  been  put  in  control 
at  the  time  war  was  declared,  many  of  the  most  acute  economic 
embarrassments  which  afflicted  the  United  States  during  the 
war  would  never  have  occurred.  War  industry  would  have 
proceeded  with  sanity  and  singleness  of  purpose  instead  of  as 
a  collection  of  competitors  resembling  traders  battling  in  the 
wheat  pit.  The  proof  of  this  statement  lies  in  the  fact  that  the 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  9 

new  organization,  coming  late  as  it  did,  at  a  time  when  it 
seemed  almost  as  if  no  human  power  could  rescue  the  supply- 
situation,  actually  and  in  the  face  of  the  most  adverse  condi- 
tions of  weather,  fuel  supply,  and  transportation,  brought  the 
War  Department's  industry  to  order  and  made  creditable  its 
performance  in  the  first  ten  months  of  1918. 

In  characterizing  the  change  in  the  organization  of  the  War 
Department  we  have  used  the  word  "abrupt" ;  but  from  this  it 
is  not  to  be  inferred  that  the  reorganization  was  accomplished 
suddenly.  The  plan  for  the  reorganization  was  worked  out 
abruptly, — it  was  worked  out  during  those  days  of  December 
when  it  was  evident  that  the  existing  organization  must  either 
reform  or  go  to  pieces, — but  to  plan  the  reorganization  was 
far  easier  than  to  put  the  plan  into  effect.  The  War  Depart- 
ment had  to  be  kept  as  a  going  concern  even  while  it  was 
changing  its  internal  structure.  While  the  Department  was 
setting  its  house  in  order,  there  could  be  no  relaxation  of  the 
pressure  upon  the  producers  of  supplies.  There  were,  more- 
over, internal  difficulties  in  the  way  of  rapid  reorganization — 
efficient  elements  to  be  retained  and  worked  into  the  new 
scheme,  legal  obstacles  to  be  hurdled  (for  all  of  the  reorganiza- 
tion had  to  keep  within  the  strictures  of  existing  law),  and  the 
capabilities  of  various  executives  had  to  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration. In  fact,  because  of  the  conditions,  the  War  De- 
partment was  forced  to  lean  heavily  upon  individual  men ;  and 
whenever  an  officer  showed  extraordinary  ability  as  an  execu- 
tive the  reorganization  was  so  conducted  as  to  give  him 
extraordinary  powers  to  administer.  The  reorganizers  were 
dealing  with  conditions  rather  than  theories,  and  they  built  up 
their  plans  to  take  the  utmost  advantage  of  things  as  they 
were.  It  follows  that  the  reorganization  was  nothing  that 
could  be  put  through  in  a  day.  The  Division  of  Purchase, 
Storage,  and  Traffic  was  not  brought  formally  into  existence 
until  April,  1918,  although  for  weeks  before  that  time  the 
most  important  activities  in  the  central  control  of  war  de- 
partment industry  were  in  full  and  effective  operation,  and  the 
industrial  situation  began  to  revive  immediately.  Not  until 


lo  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  autumn  of  1918  was  the  reorganization  complete  in  every 
detail. 

Since  the  reorganization  had  to  keep  within  the  law,  the 
central  business  office  of  the  Department,  the  Division  of  Pur- 
chase, Storage,  and  Traffic,  had  to  be  given  a  military  status. 
Its  officers  had  to  be  commissioned  in  the  Army,  and  the  Divi- 
sion itself  had  to  be  fitted  somewhere  into  the  military  organi- 
zation. There  was  no  legal  authority  for  placing  it  directly 
under  civilian  control.  It  should  be  remembered  that  this 
whole  plan  was  formulated  and  largely  carried  out  before  the 
passage  of  the  Overman  Act,  which  gave  the  President  blanket 
powers  to  rearrange  the  Government  in  any  way  he  saw  fit. 
Had  the  Overman  Act  antedated  the  reorganization  of  the 
War  Department,  it  is  possible  that  the  overhead  business 
office  of  the  Department  would  have  been  made  a  civilian 
agency  through  and  through.  But  there  was  no  Overman  Act; 
the  only  war  department  branch  which  had  any  legal  right 
to  coordinate  and  control  the  activities  of  the  other  branches 
was  the  General  Staff;  and  therefore  to  the  General  Staff  the 
new  control  agenc)^  the  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and 
Traffic,  was  attached. 

This  necessity  gave  to  the  General  Staff  (see  Figure  4)  an 
appearance  of  power  which  it  did  not  actually  possess.  In  the 
chart  the  General  Staff  itself,  through  its  Division  of  Pur- 
chase, Storage,  and  Traffic,  has  apparently  become  the  great 
procuring  agency  of  the  War  Department,  in  addition  to  its 
purely  military  functions.  This,  however,  was  only  an  ar- 
rangement pro  forma  to  give  authenticity  to  the  acts  of  the 
Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic.  Actually,  a  differ- 
ent arrangement  was  in  effect. 

The  ancient  office  of  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  had  long 
been  more  or  less  of  a  political  sinecure — a  place  of  consider- 
able honor,  but  almost  without  practical  value  or  responsi- 
bility. The  office  had  become  an  eddy  into  which  had  drifted 
a  few  incidental  and  inconsequential  functions  of  the  War 
Department,  none  of  them  directly  related  to  the  business  of 
waging  war.  It  characterizes  the  office  to  say  that  its  principal 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  u 

duty  had  been  administering  the  national  cemeteries.  When 
things  began  to  go  wrong  with  the  war  industrial  program,  the 
Secretary  of  War  saw  in  this  unused  office  the  opportunity 
to  give  to  the  War  Department  the  thing  which  it  then  most 
sorely  needed — industrial  ability  at  the  top  of  its  organization. 
In  November,  1917,  he  called  to  the  office  a  man  whose  train- 
ing and  experience  had  been  entirely  in  the  industrial  field  and 
turned  over  to  his  administration  all  the  industrial  activities  of 
the  War  Department — gave  to  him  literally  a  blanket  com- 
mission to  rescue  our  war  industry  from  the  plight  into  which 
it  had  fallen.  The  Division  of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic 
was  thereupon  plotted  as  the  agency  through  which  the  Assist- 
ant Secretary,  to  whom  later  was  also  given  the  title  "Director 
of  Munitions,"  could  gain  control  of  the  industry.  Thereafter 
the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  was  the  industrial  head  of  the 
War  Department.  But  since  this  arrangement  was  one  of 
agreement  rather  than  of  law,  the  executive  decisions  of  the 
Assistant  Secretary  went  down  to  the  Division  of  Purchase, 
Storage,  and  Traffic  as  from  the  Secretary  of  War,  through 
the  technically  legal  channel  of  the  General  Staff.  In  spite 
of  appearances,  therefore,  the  General  Staff  remained  a  purely 
military  body.  The  Chief  of  Staff  was  the  Secretary  of  War's 
military  adviser:  the  Assistant  Secretary  was  the  Secretary  of 
War's  industrial  adviser. 

This  explanation  will  make  clear  to  anyone  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  military  organization  a  situation  at  once  puzzling  and 
outwardly  improper.  Even  a  number  of  experts  within  and 
outside  the  War  Department,  taken  in  by  appearances  during 
the  war,  criticized  the  General  Staff  for  its  alleged  assumption 
of  the  powers  of  procurement.  Of  course,  no  general  staff  of 
any  army  ever  before  attempted  to  turn  itself  into  an  agency 
of  procurement.  Nor  did  our  General  Staff  do  that,  actually. 
Its  administration  of  procurement  was  only  a  perfunctory  one. 
The  actual  administration  was  always  in  the  hands  of  men 
whose  training  was  industrial. 

The  reorganization  of  the  General  Staff  was  being  studied 
and  worked  out  in  December,  1917,  but  it  was  evident  that 


12  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

we  could  not  wait  for  the  gradual  upbuilding  of  that  body. 
For  eight  months  the  whole  War  Department  had  been  drift- 
ing along  without  a  rudder.  No  one  was  directing — no  one  was 
doing  any  thinking  in  a  large  way.  The  work  of  the  War 
Department  was  not  being  properly  coordinated  with  that  of 
other  important  war-making  agencies,  such  as  the  Navy,  the 
Shipping  Board,  and  the  War  Industries  Board.  Immediate 
measures  were  necessary  to  prevent  the  failure  then  so  immi- 
nent. No  attention  was  being  given  to  general  policies.  Defi- 
nite plans  were  entirely  lacking.  No  major  programs  had  been 
worked  out.  No  large  industrial  plans  could  be  laid  until 
the  extent  of  our  military  participation  was  decided.  Our 
military  plans  depended  upon  our  ability  to  transport  men 
and  munitions  to  Europe.  This  meant  shipping.  The  amount 
of  shipping  that  could  be  allocated  to  our  transatlantic  trans- 
port fleets  depended  largely  upon  how  much  tonnage  we  could 
withdraw  from  the  fleets  which  were  supplying  our  industry 
with  raw  materials.  Withdrawing  tonnage  from  industry 
meant  decreasing  our  importations  of  iron  ore,  manganese  ore, 
chrome,  nitrates,  sugar,  and  other  important  commodities,  and 
curtailing  our  water  shipments  of  coal,  on  which  New  England 
so  largely  depended.  The  withdrawal  of  ships  from  these 
trades  would  cripple  our  war  industries.  How  much  tonnage 
could  we  afford  to  withdraw  from  commerce  in  favor  of  mili- 
tary transport*?  That  depended  upon  our  military  program. 
And  there  was  no  military  program. 

These  and  many  other  questions  had  to  be  settled  without 
further  delay.  It  was  obvious  that  what  was  needed  was  a 
small  body  of  men,  men  with  time  to  think,  placed  at  the  head 
of  the  War  Department  to  work  out  programs  and  compose 
and  harmonize  divergent,  but  pressing,  interests.  We  could 
not  afford  to  drift  any  longer.  The  solution  was  the  creation 
of  the  War  Council — a  temporary  expedient  to  bridge  over  the 
time  required  for  the  reorganization  of  the  General  Staff. 
Theoretically  the  War  Council  was  merely  an  advisory  body, 
without  authority.  However,  the  Secretary  of  War,  the  Assist- 
ant Secretary  of  War,  and  the  Chief  of  Staff  were  members 


Photo   by    U.  S.   Army  Air  Service 

MUNITIONS  AND  NAVY  BUILDINGS,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 


Photo  from  Ford  Motor   Covipany 

MAKING  LIBERTY  ENGINE  CYLINDERS 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  13 

of  it;  and  therefore  its  decisions  were  promptly  carried  out. 
It  thus  had  real  power  to  act. 

It  is  worth  while  to  pause  a  moment  to  examine  this  body- 
about  which  so  little  has  been  published  or  said.  Besides  the 
officers  named  above,  its  members  were:  Major  General  Wil- 
liam Crozier,  Major  General  E.  M.  Weaver,  Major  General 
E.  H.  Crowder,  Major  General  Henry  G.  Sharpe,  Major 
General  George  W.  Goethals,  Brigadier  General  Palmer  E. 
Pierce,  Mr.  Charles  Day,  and  Mr.  E.  R.  Stettinius.  The  first 
meeting  of  the  War  Council,  a  meeting  devoted  to  organizing, 
was  held  December  19,  1917;  and  at  this  meeting  the  Secre- 
tary of  War  outlined  the  functions  of  the  War  Council  in 
substance  as  follows: 

The  most  important  contribution  toward  the  victorious 
completion  of  the  war  was  brains  in  the  conduct  of  it.  .  .  . 
The  members  of  the  War  Council  were  expected  to  keep  in 
close  touch  with  the  situation  in  Europe,  and  for  that  pur- 
pose at  least  one  member  of  the  Council  should  be  constantly 
absent  in  Europe  getting  information  for  its  guidance.  .  .  . 
It  was  essential  for  the  Council  to  be  a  thinking  body,  and  for 
this  purpose  to  keep  itself  free  from  detail.  ...  It  should 
give  special  attention  to  the  question  of  coordination  of  mat- 
ters relating  to  the  supplies  for  the  Expeditionary  Forces  in 
France.  .  .  .  Consideration  should  be  given  each  day  to 
General  Pershing's  cablegrams.  .  .  .  Broad  questions  relating 
to  the  ports  of  embarkation  should  be  considered.  .  .  .  The 
Secretary  of  War  invited  from  the  Council  the  freest  initiative 
in  the  suggestion  of  fresh  ideas.  .  .  .  He  hoped  and  expected 
to  receive  from  the  Council  any  suggestions  that  tended  toward 
securing  final  success.  .  .  .  For  all  these  reasons  he  considered 
the  Council  the  most  important  body  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment. .  .  .  All  information  in  the  War  Department  and  in 
other  government  departments  would  be  given  to  the  War 
Council.  .  .  .* 

Under  such  auspices  the  War  Council  set  to  work  with  a 
will,   meeting  every  morning;   and  gradually  it   saw   order 

*  Digested  from  the  minutes  of  the  War  Council. 


14  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

evolved  out  of  chaos.  Most  of  its  members  gave  their  entire 
time  to  the  work  of  the  Council.  Thus  they  were  freed  from 
the  details  of  administration  and  became  able  to  visualize  the 
war  effort  as  a  whole.  For  the  first  time  since  the  declaration 
of  war  there  was  a  discussion  of  complete  programs.  In  these 
daily  conferences  first  developed  the  realization  of  the  need 
eventually  filled  by  the  creation  of  the  Shipping  Control  Com- 
mittee; and  the  Shipping  Control  Committee,  after  its  forma- 
tion, met  with  the  War  Council  every  Wednesday,  in  a  ses- 
sion which  was  given  over  to  consideration  of  the  shipping 
situation  and  in  which  the  shipping  problems  were  frankly 
discussed  and  settled  across  the  table  without  delay.  To  these 
Wednesday  shipping  meetings  came  also  the  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  Mr.  Baruch  (the  chairman  of  the  War  Industries 
Board),  Mr.  Hurley  (the  chairman  of  the  Shipping  Board), 
Mr.  Schwab  (the  director-general  of  the  Emergency  Fleet 
Corporation),  Mr.  McCormick  (the  chairman  of  the  War 
Trade  Board),  and  others. 

At  its  second  meeting,  on  December  20,  the  W^ar  Council 
got  down  to  business,  discussing  questions  arising  in  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  draft  and  taking  up  the  advisability  of 
merging  all  the  divisions  of  the  Regular  Army,  National 
Guard,  and  National  Army  into  a  single  Army  of  the  United 
States.  The  first  steps  were  taken  toward  getting  together  that 
mass  of  information  from  which  was  worked  out  our  military 
program.  The  discussion  on  this  theme  led  to  the  prompt 
creation  (in  February  and  March,  1918)  of  the  Statistics 
Branch  of  the  General  Staff. 

From  first  to  last  the  War  Council  considered  all  sorts  of 
questions  relating  to  the  conduct  of  the  war;  but  it  was  never 
more  than  temporarily  diverted  from  its  main  task — that  of 
formulating  and  adopting  a  comprehensive  military  program. 
After  all  the  necessary  figures  and  other  data  had  been  col- 
lected, studied,  and  digested,  the  program  was  outlined,  taken 
to  the  President  for  his  approval,  approved  by  the  President, 
and  formally  adopted.  Thereafter  the  War  Council  was  kept 
busy  considering  changes  in  the  program  made  necessary  by 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  15 

the  ever  shifting  conditions  in  Europe  during  the  first  six 
months  of  1918,  and  in  investigating  and  strengthening  what 
seemed  to  be  the  weak  spots.  The  War  Council  held  daily 
meetings  until  May  1,  1918.  From  then  until  July  the  meet- 
ings were  not  so  frequent,  and  from  July  to  the  armistice  only 
the  Wednesday  shipping  meetings  continued  to  be  held. 

The  vindication  of  the  usefulness  of  the  War  Council,  of  the 
fact  that  it  filled  an  important  place  in  the  administration  of 
the  War  Department,  came  after  the  armistice.  Congress,  in 
reorganizing  the  War  Department  in  conformity  with  the 
lessons  learned  during  the  war,  created  a  permanent  War 
Council,  which  exists  to-day,  ready  to  fulfill  its  part  in  the 
event  of  another  emergency.  Such  an  overhead  planning  body 
would  have  been  of  invaluable  service,  had  it  been  created  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  war  in  1917,  since  we  would  have  had  from 
it  an  early  solution  of  problems  which  under  the  old  procedure 
hampered  the  war  program  for  many  months. 

The  original  reorganization  of  the  War  Department  per- 
sisted for  a  year  and  a  half  after  the  armistice,  the  Division  of 
Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic — still  attached  to  the  General 
Staff — dealing  with  the  numerous  industrial  problems  that 
arose  in  the  course  of  the  demobilization.  But  as  the  War 
Department's  business  dwindled  in  volume  and  once  more 
approached  the  normal,  the  time  came  to  place  the  Depart- 
ment upon  the  permanent  peace  footing.  It  was  a  time  to 
apply  the  lessons  learned  during  the  war,  when  the  scars  of 
old  mistakes  were  still  red  and  smarting.  The  old  independent 
bureau  system  had  been  an  egregious  failure  during  the  Span- 
ish-American War,  but  the  country  had  not  been  wise  enough 
after  that  brief  conflict  to  apply  the  lesson  and  correct  the 
organization  before  the  World  War.  To  repeat  that  error  was 
unthinkable;  and  in  the  spring  of  1920,  as  a  measure  in  future 
preparedness.  Congress  took  steps  to  give  the  War  Depart- 
ment a  permanent  supply  organization  that  could  function 
effectively  in  the  event  of  war. 

The  question  was  whether  to  preserve  the  organization 
adopted  during  the  war  or  to  provide  something  different  and 


i6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

better.  It  was  found  to  be  no  easy  thing  to  make  a  change,  for 
some  of  the  highest  officials  of  the  General  Staff  had  begun  to 
take  themselves  seriously  as  producers  of  military  supplies — 
shutting  their  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  inclusion  of  the  Divi- 
sion of  Purchase,  Storage,  and  Traffic  within  the  General 
Staff  had  been  only  a  measure  of  legal  expediency — and  urged 
the  retention  of  the  1918  plan  permanently.  Since  the  arrange- 
ment which  made  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  the  director 
of  the  manufacturing  enterprises  had  no  legal  foundation,  it 
followed  that,  if  the  war  organization  were  perpetuated  in 
law  as  the  peace  organization,  the  General  Staff  was  bound  to 
become  supreme  in  questions  of  producing  supplies,  and  that 
the  control  of  the  Assistant  Secretary  over  these  affairs  would 
depend  each  time  upon  the  ability  and  aggressiveness  of  the 
Assistant  Secretary  who  chanced  to  be  in  office. 

From  the  standpoint  of  good  organization,  any  assumption 
by  the  General  Staff  of  control  over  the  production  of  supplies 
is  fundamentally  wrong,  and  in  a  great  emergency  it  might 
prove  to  be  as  disastrous  as  the  attempted  operation  of  the  War 
Department  by  its  independent  bureaus.  To  be  sure,  the 
General  Staff  is  concerned  with  the  production  of  supplies, 
and  vitally  so — as  much  concerned  as  it  is  with  problems  in 
'personnel.  The  General  Staff  is  the  Army's  great  advisory  and 
coordinating  agency,  and  therefore  the  supply  problems  prop- 
erly fall  within  its  jurisdiction.  Its  interest  in  these  problems, 
however,  is  military  rather  than  industrial — a  distinction 
which  many  staff  officers  were  unable  to  grasp.  The  range  of 
supplies  to  be  produced,  the  quantities  of  them,  and  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  finished  supplies  are  affairs  in  which  the 
General  Staff  should  be  supreme.  It  should  even  dictate  specifi- 
cations with  the  understanding  that  the  specifications  are  mili- 
tary specifications  and  not  manufacturing  specifications.  It  can 
if  it  likes  call  for  the  production  of  airplanes  with  a  speed  of 
200  miles  an  hour,  or  of  field  guns  that  can  shoot  50  miles, 
but  the  moment  it  attempts  to  design  these  materials  and  to 
procure  their  manufacture,  then  it  trespasses  in  a  field  not 
properly  its  own. 


i8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

When  the  War  Department  approaches  industry  with  de- 
mands for  production  on  a  modern  war-time  scale,  to  be 
effective  it  must  deal  with  industry  on  a  practical  industrial 
basis.  It  must  speak  the  language  of  the  tribe.  This  the  general 
staff  officer  is  not  fitted  to  do.  His  whole  training  has  been  in 
another  field.  A  Chief  of  Staff  must  be  a  man  of  great  military 
experience,  one  who  has  spent  his  life  in  military  affairs.  To 
expect  him  to  be  also  a  successful  administrator  of  war  indus- 
try is  to  expect  too  much.  He  is  no  more  fitted  by  experience 
for  such  work  than  a  Presbyterian  synod  is  qualified  to  promote 
a  prize  fight. 

This  view  prevailed  in  Congress,  and  the  permanent  reor- 
ganization law  of  June  4,  1920,  as  indicated  in  our  Figure 
5,  recognized  the  dual  function  of  waging  war — the  military 
function  and  the  industrial.  Before  the  World  War  the  pro- 
duction of  munitions  was  supposed  to  be  merely  incidental  to 
the  larger  project  of  raising  an  army  and  maneuvering  it  at 
the  front.  It  took  the  experience  in  France  to  demonstrate  to 
us  that  wars  have  become  as  much  industrial  as  militar}'  and 
that  a  nation  at  war  is  only  as  strong  as  its  industry.  The 
reorganization  law  set  up  the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War  as 
the  industrial  head  of  the  War  Department  and  added  appre- 
ciably to  his  salary,  so  that  the  office,  with  its  great  responsi- 
bilities, might  attract  from  industry  men  of  ability.  In  any 
estimate  of  the  military  assets  which  the  World  War  provided 
for  the  United  States,  the  fact  should  not  be  overlooked  that, 
as  long  as  the  present  law  stands,  we  have  in  the  War  Depart- 
ment an  organization  which  should  enable  war  industry  to 
proceed  effectively  from  the  first  minute  of  our  belligerency. 
To  change  from  a  peace  to  a  war  footing,  all  that  will  be 
necessary  is  to  increase  the  number  of  workers  in  the  office  of 
the  Assistant  Secretary  of  War,  as  the  expanding  program 
demands  the  services  of  sub-executives. 

That  this  is  the  correct  theory  of  organization  for  the  War 
Department  was  stated  unequivocally  by  a  most  able  and 
expert  authority,  a  man  not  unacquainted  with  the  working 
of  the  Department: 


WAR  DEPARTMENT  ORGANIZATION  19 

...  to  prepare  the  country  to  meet  a  state  of  war  with  honor  and 
safety,  much  must  depend  on  the  organization  of  our  military  peace 
establishment.  .  .  .  To  give  such  an  organization,  the  leading  prin- 
ciples in  its  formation  ought  to  be  that  at  the  commencement  of  hostili- 
ties there  should  be  nothing  either  to  new  model  or  to  create.  The  only 
difference,  consequently,  between  the  peace  and  war  formation  .  .  . 
ought  to  be  in  the  increased  magnitude  of  the  latter;  and  the  only 
change  in  passing  from  the  former  to  the  latter  should  consist  in 
giving  to  it  the  augmentation  which  will  then  be  necessary. 

These  words  were  not  written  with  the  lesson  of  the  World 
War  fresh  in  mind,  as  they  might  seem  to  have  been.  They 
were  the  words  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  the  Secretary  of  War  in 
President  Monroe's  cabinet,  in  his  annual  report  for  the  year 
1820.  A  century  later  we  have  written  those  principles  into 
law — but  not  before  going  through  a  costly  experience  in 
disregarding  them. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM 

TO  arm  the  manhood  called  to  defend  the  nation  in 
1917  and  1918,  to  make  civilians  into  soldiers  by- 
giving  them  the  tools  of  the  martial  profession — such 
was  the  task  of  the  Ordnance  Department  in  the  late  war. 

The  casual  mind  may  define  ordnance  as  artillery  alone.  It 
will  surprise  many  to  learn  that  in  the  American  ordnance 
catalogue  of  supplies  during  the  recent  war  there  were  over 
100,000  separate  and  distinct  items.  Thousands  of  the  items 
of  ordnance  were  distinctly  noncommercial ;  that  is,  they  had  to 
be  designed  and  produced  specially  for  the  uses  of  war. 

Although  the  principles  of  fighting  have  changed  essentially 
not  one  whit  since  the  age  when  projectiles  were  stones  hurled 
by  catapults,  nearly  every  advance  in  mechanical  science  has 
had  its  corollary  in  warfare,  until  to-day  the  weapons  which 
man  has  devised  to  destroy  the  military  power  of  his  enemy- 
make  up  an  intricate  and  imposing  list.  When  America 
accepted  the  challenge  of  Germany  in  1917,  part  of  the  range 
of  ordnance  had  already  been  produced  in  moderate  quanti- 
ties in  the  United  States,  part  of  it  had  been  developed  by  the 
more  militaristic  nations  of  the  world  in  the  last  decade  or 
quarter  century,  and  part  of  it  was  purely  the  offspring  of  two 
and  one-half  years  of  desperate  fighting  before  America 
entered  the  great  struggle.  Yet  all  of  it,  both  the  strange  and 
the  familiar,  had  to  be  put  in  production  here  on  a  grand 
scale  and  in  a  minimum  of  time,  that  the  American  millions 
might  go  adequately  equipped  to  meet  the  foe.  Let  us  examine 
the  range  of  this  equipment,  seeing  in  the  major  items  some- 
thing of  the  caliber  of  the  problem  which  confronted  the 
Ordnance  Department  at  the  outset  of  the  great  enterprise. 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  21 

To  begin  with  the  artillery:  First  in  order  of  size  there  was 
the  baby  two-man  cannon  of  37  millimeters  (about  an  inch 
and  a  half)  in  the  diameter  of  its  bore — a  European  develop- 
ment new  to  our  experience,  so  light  that  it  could  be  handled 
by  foot  troops  in  the  field,  used  for  annihilating  the  enemy's 
machine  gun  emplacements.  Then  came  the  mobile  field  guns  : 
the  famous  75,  the  equivalent  in  size  of  our  former  3-inch 
gun;  the  155-millimeter  howitzer;  the  French  155-millimeter 
G.  P.  F.  (Grand  Puissance  Filloux)  gun  of  glorious  record  in 
the  war,  and  its  American  prototypes,  the  4.7-inch,  5-inch, 
and  6-inch  guns — all  of  these  employed  to  shell  crossroads 
and  harass  the  enemy's  middle  area.  Beyond  these  were  the 
8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers  and  the  terrific  240-millimeter 
howitzer,  for  throwing  great  weights  of  destruction  high  in 
air,  to  descend  with  a  plunge  upon  the  enemy's  strongest  de- 
fenses. Then  there  were  the  8-inch,  10-inch,  12-inch,  and  14- 
inch  guns  on  railway  mounts,  for  pounding  the  depots  and 
dumps  in  the  enemy's  back  areas.  These  weapons  were  so  tre- 
mendous in  weight  when  mounted  as  to  require  from  16  to 
24  axles  on  the  car,  to  distribute  the  load  and  the  recoil  of 
firing  within  the  limits  of  the  strength  of  standard  heavy 
railway  track. 

All  these  guns  had  to  be  produced  in  great  numbers,  if  the 
future  requirements  of  the  American  forces  were  to  be  met; 
produced  by  thousands  in  the  smaller  sizes  and  by  hundreds 
and  scores  in  the  larger. 

And  these  weapons  would  be  ineffective  without  adequate 
supplies  of  ammunition.  For  the  mobile  field  guns  this  meant 
a  requirement  of  millions  of  shell  or  shrapnel,  to  sustain  the 
incessant  bombardments  and  the  concentrated  barrages  which 
characterized  the  great  war.  The  entire  weight  of  projectiles 
fired  in  such  an  historic  engagement  as  Gettysburg  would 
supply  the  artillery  for  only  a  few  minutes  in  such  intensive 
bombardments  as  sowed  the  soil  of  Flanders  with  steel. 

The  artillery  demanded  also  an  immense  amount  of  heavy 
equipment — limbers,  caissons,  auto  ammunition  trucks,  and 
tractors  to  drag  the  heavy  and  middle-heavy  artillery.  Some 


22  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  these  vehicles  were  fitted  with  self-propelled  caterpillar 
mounts  which  could  climb  a  40-degree  grade  or  make  as  high 
as  twelve  miles  an  hour  on  level  ground.  These,  the  adapta- 
tions to  warfare  of  peaceful  farm-  and  construction-machine 
traction,  for  the  first  time  rendered  the  greater  guns  exceed- 
ingly mobile,  enabling  them  to  go  into  action  instantly  upon 
arrival  and  to  depart  to  safety  just  as  soon  as  their  mission 
was  accomplished. 

Then,  too,  this  artillerv^  equipment  had  to  have  adequate 
facilities  for  maintenance  in  the  field,  and  this  need  brought 
into  existence  another  enormous  phase  of  the  ordnance  pro- 
gram. There  had  to  be  mobile  ordnance  repair  shops  for  each 
division,  consisting  of  miniature  machine  shops  completely 
fitted  out  with  power  and  its  transmission  equipment  and 
mounted  directly  on  motor  trucks.  There  had  to  be  semi-heavy 
repair  shops  on  5-ton  tractors,  these  to  be  to  the  corps  what 
the  truck  machine  shop  was  to  the  division.  Each  army  head- 
quarters called  for  its  semi-permanent  repair  shop  for  artillery 
and  still  larger  repair  shops  for  its  railway  artillery. 

And  in  addition  to  all  these  there  were  the  base  repair  shops 
in  France,  erected  on  a  scale  to  employ  a  force  three  times  as 
large  as  the  combined  organizations  of  all  the  manufacturing 
arsenals  of  the  United  States  in  time  of  peace.  These  shops  had 
a  capacity  for  relining  1,000  cannon  and  overhauling  and 
repairing  2,000  motor  vehicles,  7,000  machine  guns,  50,000 
rifles,  and  2,000  pistols  every  month.  This  equipment  of  artil- 
lery and  its  maintenance  organization  implies  the  flow  from 
American  industry  of  enormous  quantities  of  repair  parts  and 
spare  parts  to  keep  the  artillery  in  good  condition. 

Coming  next  to  the  more  personal  equipment  of  the  soldier, 
we  find  the  Ordnance  Department  confronted  by  the  necessity 
of  manufacturing  shoulder  rifles  by  the  million  and  cartridges 
for  them  by  the  billion.  The  World  War  brought  the  machine 
gun  into  its  own,  requiring  in  the  United  States  the  manufac- 
ture of  these  complicated  and  expensive  weapons  by  tens  of 
thousands,  including  the  one-man  automatic  rifle,  itself  an  arm 
of  a  deadly  and  effective  type. 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  23 

Simultaneously  with  the  mass  employment  of  machine  guns 
in  the  field  came  the  development  of  the  modern  machine  gun 
barrage,  the  indirect  fire  of  which  required  sighting  instruments 
of  the  most  delicate  and  accurate  sort,  and  tripods  with  finely 
calibrated  elevating  and  traversing  devices,  so  that  the  gunner 
might  place  the  deadly  hail  safely  over  the  heads  of  his  own 
unseen  advancing  lines  with  maximum  damage  to  the  enemy. 
And  the  thousands  of  machine  guns  required  water  jackets  to 
keep  their  barrels  cool  and  specially  built  carts  for  carrying 
them. 

The  personal  armament  of  the  soldier  also  called  for  an 
automatic  pistol  or  a  revolver  for  use  in  the  infighting,  when 
squads  came  in  actual  contact  with  soldiers  of  the  enemy. 
These  had  to  be  produced  by  hundreds  of  thousands.  The 
requirements  of  the  field  demanded  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
trench  knives — murderous  blades  backed  by  the  momentum  of 
heavily  weighted  handles,  which  in  turn  were  protected  by 
guards  embodying  the  principle  of  the  thug's  brass  "knucks" 
armed  with  sharp  points.  Then  there  were  the  special  weapons, 
largely  bom  of  modern  trench  warfare.  These  included  mor- 
tars, ranging  from  the  small  3-inch  Stokes,  light  enough  to 
go  over  the  top  and  simple  enough  to  be  fired  from  between 
the  steadying  knees  of  a  squatting  soldier,  to  the  great  240- 
millimeter  trench  mortar  of  fixed  position.  The  mortars  proved 
to  be  exceedingly  effective  against  concentrations  of  troops; 
and  there  was  devised  for  them  a  great  variety  of  bombs  and 
shell,  not  only  of  the  high-explosive  fragmentation  type,  but 
also  of  types  containing  poison  gas  or  fuming  chemicals. 
Great  quantities  both  of  mortars  and  of  their  ammunition  were 
required. 

From  the  security  of  the  trenches  the  soldiers  first  threw  out 
grenades,  which  burst  in  the  enemy's  trenches  opposite  and 
created  havoc.  From  the  original  device  were  developed 
grenades  of  various  sorts — gas  grenades  for  cleaning  up  dug- 
outs, molten-metal  grenades  for  fusing  the  firing  mechanisms 
of  captured  enemy  cannon  and  machine  guns,  paper  grenades 
to  kill  by  concussion.  Then  there  were  the  rifle  grenades,  each 


24  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

to  be  fitted  on  the  muzzle  of  a  rifle  and  hurled  by  the  lift  of 
gases  following  the  bullet,  which  passed  neatly  through  the 
hole  provided  for  it.  The  production  of  grenades  was  no  small 
part  of  the  American  ordnance  problem.  In  addition  to  these 
trench  weapons  were  the  Livens  projectors,  which,  fired  in 
multiple  by  electricity,  hurled  a  veritable  cloud  of  gas  con- 
tainers into  a  selected  area  of  enemy  terrain,  usually  with 
great  demoralization  of  enemy  forces.  Bayonets  for  the  rifles, 
bolos,  helmets,  periscopes  for  looking  safely  over  the  edges 
of  the  trenches,  panoramic  sights,  range  finders — these  are 
only  a  few  of  the  ordnance  accessories  of  general  application. 

Then  there  were  those  innovations  of  the  great  war,  the 
tanks — the  3-ton  "whippet,"  built  to  escort  the  infantry 
waves;  the  6-ton  tanks,  most  used  of  all;  and  the  powerful 
Anglo-American  heavy  tanks,  each  mounting  a  37-millimeter 
cannon  and  four  machine  guns. 

The  war  in  the  air  put  added  demands  upon  ordnance.  It 
required  the  stripped  machine  gun  which  fired  cartridges  so 
rapidly  that  their  explosions  merged  into  a  single  continuous 
roar,  yet  timed  each  shot  so  nicely  that  it  passed  between  the 
flying  blades  of  the  propeller.  There  had  to  be  electric  heaters 
for  the  gun  mechanisms  to  prevent  the  oil  which  lubricated  them 
from  becoming  congealed  in  the  cold  of  high  altitudes.  The 
airplane  gun  required  armor-piercing  bullets  for  use  against 
armored  planes,  incendiary  bullets  to  ignite  the  hydrogen  of 
the  enemy's  balloon  or  to  fire  the  gasoline  escaping  through  the 
wound  in  the  hostile  airplane's  fuel  tank,  and  tracer  bullets 
to  direct  the  aim  of  the  aerial  gunner.  Other  equipment  for 
the  airman  included  shot  counters,  to  tell  him  instantly  what 
quantity  of  ammunition  he  had  on  hand,  and  gun  sights, 
ingeniously  contrived  to  correct  his  aim  automatically  for  the 
relative  speed  and  direction  of  the  opposing  plane.  These  were 
all  developments  in  ordnance  brought  about  by  the  World 
War,  and  each  involved  problems  for  the  production  organiza- 
tion to  solve. 

Then  there  were  the  drop  bombs  of  aerial  warfare,  of  many 
gradations  in  weight  up  to  500  pounds  each,  these  latter  ex- 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  25 

perimental  ones  forecasting  the  day  when  bombs  weighing 
1,600  pounds  would  be  dropped  from  the  sky;  then  bomb 
sights  to  determine  the  moment  when  the  missile  must  be 
dropped  in  order  to  hit  its  target,  sights  which  corrected  for 
the  altitude,  the  wind  resistance,  and  the  rate  of  speed  of  the 
airplane;  and  then  mechanisms  to  suspend  the  bombs  from 
the  plane  and  to  release  them  at  the  will  of  the  operator. 

The  list  might  be  stretched  out  almost  indefinitely — through 
pyrotechnics,  developed  by  the  exigencies  in  Europe  into  an 
elaborate  system;  through  helmets  and  armor,  revivals  from 
medieval  times  to  protect  the  modern  soldier  from  injury; 
through  the  assortment  of  heavy  textiles,  which  gave  the 
troops  their  belts,  their  bandoleers,  their  haversacks,  and  their 
holsters;  through  canteens,  cutlery  for  the  messes  in  the  field, 
shotguns,  and  so  on.  There  might  be  set  down  thousands  of 
items  of  the  list  which  we  know  as  modern  ordnance. 

It  will  be  noted  that  the  most  important  articles  in  this 
range  are  articles  of  a  noncommercial  type.  In  other  words, 
they  are  not  the  sort  of  things  that  the  industry  of  the  country 
builds  in  time  of  peace,  or  learns  how  to  build.  Many  other 
war  functions  came  naturally  to  a  country  skilled  in  handling 
food  supplies  for  teeming  populations,  in  solving  housing 
problems  for  whole  cities,  and  in  managing  transportation  for 
a  hundred  million  people;  there  was  at  hand  the  requisite 
ability  to  conduct  war  enterprises  of  such  scope  smoothly  and 
efficiently.  But  there  was  in  the  country  at  the  outbreak  of  war 
little  knowledge  of  the  technique  of  ordnance  production. 

The  declaration  of  war  found  an  American  Ordnance  De- 
partment whose  entire  commissioned  personnel  consisted  of 
ninety-seven  officers.  Only  ten  of  this  number  were  experienced 
in  the  design  of  artillery  weapons.  The  projected  army  of 
5,000,000  men  required  1 1,000  trained  officers  to  handle  every 
phase  of  ordnance  service.  To  be  sure,  a  portion  of  this  pro- 
duction would  have  to  do  with  the  manufacture  of  articles  of  a 
commercial  type,  such  as  automobiles,  trucks,  meat  cans,  mess 
equipment,  and  the  like;  yet  the  ratio  of  97  to  11,000  gives 
an  indication  of  the  amount  of  ordnance  knowledge  possessed 


26  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

by  the  War  Department  at  the  outbreak  of  war  as  compared 
to  what  it  would  need  to  equip  the  first  5,000,000  men  for 
battle. 

The  Government  could  obtain  commissary  officers  from  the 
food  industry;  it  could  turn  bank  tellers  into  paymasters, 
convert  builders  into  construction  quartermasters,  find  trans- 
portation officers  in  the  great  railway  systems,  Signal  Corps 
officers  in  the  telegraph  companies,  medical  officers  in  profes- 
sional life.  But  there  was  no  broad  field  to  which  ordnance 
could  turn  to  find  specialized  skill  available.  The  best  it  could 
do  was  to  go  into  the  heavy  manufacturing  industry  for  expert 
engineers  who  could  later  be  trained  in  the  special  problems 
of  ordnance. 

Prior  to  1914  there  were  but  six  government  arsenals  and 
two  large  private  ordnance  works  which  knew  anything  about 
the  production  of  heavy  weapons.  After  1914  war  industry 
sprang  up  in  the  United  States;  but  in  1917  there  were  only  a 
score  or  so  of  firms  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  artillery 
ammunition,  big  guns,  rifles,  machine  guns,  and  other  impor- 
tant ordnance  supplies  for  the  Allies.  When  the  armistice  was 
signed,  nearly  8,000  manufacturing  plants  in  the  United  States 
were  working  on  ordnance  contracts.  It  is  true  that  many  of 
these  contracts  entailed  production  not  much  dissimilar  to 
commercial  output;  yet  here  is  another  ratio — the  twenty  or 
more  original  factories  compared  with  the  ultimate  8,000 — 
which  serves  to  indicate  the  expansion  of  our  industrial  knowl- 
edge of  the  special  processes  incident  to  ordnance  manufacture. 

When  we  found  ourselves  in  the  war,  our  first  step  was  to 
extend  our  ordnance  knowledge  as  quickly  as  possible.  The 
war  in  Europe  had  developed  thousands  of  new  items  of 
ordnance,  many  of  them  carefully  guarded  as  military  secrets, 
with  which  our  own  officers  were  familiar  in  only  a  general 
way.  As  soon  as  we  became  a  belligerent,  we  at  once  turned  to 
the  Allies,  and  they  freely  and  fully  gave  us  of  their  store  of 
knowledge — plans,  specifications,  working  models,  secret  de- 
vices, and  complete  manufacturing  processes.  With  this  knowl- 
edge at  hand,  we  adopted  for  our  own  program  certain  French 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM 


27 


vO 


<3 


^ 


^ 


'^ 


(S   r>-  v^  w    ji  ■  -  CTs 

^  <N  cf;  ^  E?  "^  - 

t^  CO  CO  CO  —    _ 

-..-■II 


s^ 


c   c 


rt     rt  ^  ^  J2  j3 
O    O    c    rt    «    w  •-•    (3  •-<  ••-< 


M    CO—    -"    O^O^co-"    t-«.r>.'<* 


rt  ^ 


3    rt    rt 


^    ^ 


r^pH 


t;     «J     ii     C 

H  3  E  £ 


■^vO^r^OOO    —    —    —    —    — 

^oooooo  o^o^c^o^o^a\c^a^ 


i— I    ■ — !    T3 


4^ 


a    Pi 
o    o 


*->     iJ     V 


*'     »-     ri 

^  .0 


<y      I- 


5     ^- 

J3 


aj    o    o 


V 


X  "o 

4* 


w 


ex  J 


g^       4^       q,^ 


ni     rt     fc-     o,   C 
3  ^     C  C/D 


tuD  « 


rt 


t;  pC  j2  ^ 


o 


_,  ^^    o 

S  "  £  « 


^    rt 


.5     c 


rj 


.2     Ji   2   ^  -^ 


2     ^ 


to    Cl      O     w3 


w   13 

O 
J3 


E::3 

cO-< 


(U 


^  15 

>    rt    rt 

'=i  CI  .:£ 

o 


4; 
> 


to'    u 


C 

41 


41 


"rt  C/3 


H  .^ 


13 

CO 


4)    TS 


J«3 


<u 


S  ly 


OT      C3      rt 

-    c    " 


W)  o 

3       CO 


rt 

c  Is  ^ 

.^    .  CO 

-ti  ^  -^ 


CO      tj 
4;      (U 

so 


O  41 
Cl    to 

4> 

•>.  4) 

CO  .4-) 

S  "^ 

Vt-i  o 


O 


O 
41 

a 
O 


C       4^ 


CU 


4> 


CO      4> 

13 


pj     u. 


£-^ 


j:;     41 
Ic  "^ 


4> 

o  H 

3 


<+i 


28  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

types  of  field  guns  and  howitzers  and  British  types  of  heavy 
howitzers.  The  reproduction  of  the  British  types  caused  no 
unusual  difficulties;  but  the  adoption  of  French  plans  brought 
into  the  situation  a  factor  the  difficulties  of  which  are  apt  not 
to  be  appreciated  by  the  uninitiated.  This  new  element  was 
the  circumstance  that  the  entire  French  system  of  manufacture 
in  metals  is  radically  different  from  our  own  in  its  practices  and 
is  not  readily  adapted  to  American  methods. 

The  English  and  the  American  engineers  and  shops  use 
inches  and  feet  in  their  measurements,  but  the  French  use  the 
metric  system.  This  fact  means  that  there  was  not  a  single 
standard  American  drill,  reamer,  tap,  die,  or  other  machine- 
shop  tool  that  would  accurately  produce  the  result  called  for 
by  a  French  ordnance  drawing  in  the  metric  system.  Moreover, 
the  French  standards  for  metal  stocks,  sheets,  plates,  angles, 
I-beams,  rivet  holes,  and  rivet  spacing  are  far  different  from 
American  standards. 

It  was  discovered  that  complete  French  drawings  were  in 
numerous  cases  nonexistent,  the  French  practice  relying  for 
small  details  upon  the  memory  and  skill  of  the  artisans.  But 
even  when  the  complete  drawings  were  obtained,  the  Ameri- 
can ordnance  engineer  was  confronted  with  the  choice  of  either 
revolutionizing  the  machining  industry  of  the  United  States 
by  changing  over  its  entire  equipment  to  conform  to  the  metric 
system,  or  else  of  doing  what  was  done — namely,  translating 
the  French  designs  into  terms  of  standard  American  shop 
practice,  a  process  which  in  numerous  cases  required  weeks  and 
even  months  of  time  on  the  part  of  whole  staffs  of  experts 
working  at  high  tension. 

Nor  do  the  French  know  the  American  quantity-production 
methods.  The  French  artisan  sees  always  the  finished  article, 
and  he  is  given  discretion  in  the  final  dimensions  of  parts  and 
in  the  fitting  and  assembling  of  them.  But  the  American 
mechanic  sees  only  the  part  in  which  he  is  a  specialist  in 
machining;  he  works  within  strict  tolerances  and  produces 
pieces  which  require  little  or  no  fitting  in  the  assembling  room. 
In  the  translating  of  French  plans,  therefore,  it  was  necessary 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  29 


FIGURE  7 

Rates  of  Artillery  Fire  per  Gun  per  Day  in  Recent  Wars 

Approximate  rounds  per  gun 
War  Army  per  day 

1854-56,  Crimean  British  and  i 

French  ""    •* 

1859,  Italian  Austrian 

1861-65,  Civil  Union 

1866,  Austro-Prussian         ■!  „ 

[  r  russian 

1870-71,  Franco-Prussian  German 

1904-05,  Russo-Japanese  Russian 

1912-13,  Balkan  Bulgarian 

World  War 

September,  1914  French  hi^hi  '8 

Jan.  i-Oct.  1,  1918  Italian  ■■■■  ^8 

Jan.  i-Nov.  11,  1918  United  States  hhi^h^^^^^^^^  ^30 

Jan.  i-Nov.  11,  1918  French  ^^aimmmmi^Kmaammmmmm  ^34 

Jan.  i-Nov.  11,  1918  British  m^mmmm^^mmmimm^a^m  ^35 

^  Siege  of  Sebastopol.  *  Field-gun  ammunition  only. 

The  rates  are  based  upon  total  expenditure  and  average  num- 
ber of  guns  in  the  hands  of  field  armies  for  the  period  of  the  wars. 

A  large  part  of  the  heavy  expenditure  of  artillery  ammunition 
in  the  last  as  compared  with  other  modern  wars  can  be  attributed 
to  the  increased  rate  of  fire  made  possible  by  improved  methods  of 
supply  in  the  field  and  by  the  rapid-fire  guns  now  in  use.  In  wars 
fought  before  the  introduction  of  quick-firing  field  guns,  four  or 
five  rounds  a  day  was  the  greatest  average  rate.  Even  this  was 
reached  only  in  the  siege  of  Sebastopol,  where  armies  were  sta- 
tionary and  supply  by  water  was  easy,  and  in  the  American  Civil 
War,  which  was  characterized  by  advanced  tactical  developments. 
The  guns  of  the  Allied  armies  in  France  fired  throughout  the  year 
1918  at  a  rate  about  seven  times  greater  than  these  previous  high 
rates. 


to  put  into  them  what  they  had  never  had  before:  namely, 
rigid  tolerances  and  exact  measurements. 

When  an  army  of  100,000  men  expands  and  becomes  an 
army  of  3,000,000,  it  becomes  a  job  just  30  times  bigger  to 
feed  the  3,000,000  than  it  was  to  feed  the  100,000.  A  soldier 


30  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  a  campaigning  army  eats  no  more  than  a  soldier  of  a  quiet 
military  post.  The  same  law  is  true  approximately  of  clothing 
an  amiy.  But  the  army's  consumption  of  ammunition  in  time 
of  war  is  far  out  of  proportion  to  its  numerical  expansion  to 
meet  the  war  emergency. 

For  instance,  an  army  machine  gun  in  time  of  peace  might 
fire  6,000  rounds  in  practice  during  the  year.  This  was  the 
standard  quantity  of  cartridges  provided  in  peace.  But  for  a 
single  machine  gun  on  the  field  in  such  a  war  as  the  recent  one, 
it  is  necessary  to  provide  288,875  rounds  of  ammunition  during 
its  first  year  of  operation,  this  figure  including  the  initial  stock 
and  the  reserve  supply  as  well  as  the  actual  number  of  rounds 
fired.  Thus  the  machine  gun  of  war  increases  its  appetite,  so 
to  speak,  for  ammunition  4,700  per  cent  in  the  first  year  of 
fighting. 

For  larger  weapons,  the  increase  in  ammunition  consumption 
is  even  more  startling.  Prior  to  1917  the  War  Department 
allotted  to  each  3-inch  field  gun  125  rounds  of  ammuni- 
tion a  year  for  practice  firing.  Ammunition  for  the  75-milli- 
meter guns  (the  equivalent  of  the  3-inch)  was  being  produced 
in  1917-1918  to  meet  an  estimated  requirement  of  22,750 
rounds  for  each  gun  in  a  single  year,  or  an  increased  consump- 
tion of  ammunition  in  war  over  peace  of  18,100  per  cent. 

Thus,  when  a  peace  army  of  100,000  becomes  a  war  army 
of  3,000,000  its  ammunition  consumption  becomes  not  30  times 
greater,  but  anywhere  from  48  to  182  times  30  times  greater — 
an  increase  far  out  of  proportion  to  its  increase  in  the  consump- 
tion of  food,  clothing,  or  other  standard  supplies.  Modern 
invention  has  made  possible  and  modern  practice  has  put  into 
effect  a  greatly  augmented  use  of  ammunition.  Figures  6,  7, 
and  8  show  graphically  how  ammunition  expenditure  has 
increased  in  modem  times. 

Another  circumstance  that  complicated  the  ordnance  prob- 
lem was  the  increasing  tendency  throughout  the  World  War  to 
use  more  and  more  the  mechanical  or  machine  methods  of 
fighting  as  opposed  to  the  older  and  simpler  forms  in  which 
the  human  or  animal  factor  entered  to  a  greater  extent. 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM 


31 


5; 

<i 

."^ 

00 

55 

5i 

W 

S 

ec 

Si 

U) 

^ 

0 
1— 1 

^^ 

^ 

•^^ 

■<V4 

k. 

"=^ 

« 
^ 


<o 


5j    <^ 


Q:i 


o  o  o 

o^  r^  q  q  8 

«^  C;  I::  S  o 

Ld  vo  <»  <^  R 


3  c  d  p  ij  .    „  .  - 


t;     o   o   rt  2 


.2  r^     •;=     c 


?!   ^  n   o 


rt  .«      P      t,    P    rt  ►C 
^  U    <    [=N  rt  W  ^ 


^ 


0\   - 

00  00 


o  n-  (N  00 

1^  o  -  - 

00  a^  c?i  a\ 

-"   -^  —  — 


<o 


5c 


:i 


_      <U      M      O 

.2  .t:  -z!  c 


>   o   o   o 


Tl-00  00  00 
vo  -  -  - 
00   C\  a>  o^ 


V-i       dj       flj 

a.)    V-    >    rt 


C3 


V         , ,  c 

i-  -T3  •--  t»  t, 

73  V  >  J^  V 

w  ^-  vt  —  ^3 

rt  -a  U  ^  o 

-°  w  j:  ^ 

►,  "^  S  „  "^ 

-5  ^  ^  ^ 


-.3^3 


0 

CO 

M 

c 

-C 

4J 

'Xj 

u 

<u 

X 

6 

rt 

p 

s 

a, 
0 

G 

-13 

1-5 

a 

u< 

^1 

■4-J 

C 

-) 

t* 

rt 

^3 

C 

W 

-0 

JS 

r^ 

-0 

k- 

TJ 

^ 

C 

<u 

.2 
'■i-j 

m 

•4-J 

1 

rt 

^3 
0 

s 

j3 

to 

0 

^-i 

d 

3 

> 

rt 

0 

M 

rt 

B 

4J 
en 

N 

u. 
0 

06 

.2 

S 

rt 

3 
0 

0\ 

b 

s 

b 

*-! 

o  ^ 


:5   T    rt  .H    v 


7^       <U    .-H 


£    1) 


c   5 


13       1-.   -rt 


.t:  -Q 


T3  .2 


^    o 
ii    S 


c   1-^ 

Q^     4-1      l-< 


32  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

When  the  United  States  entered  the  war  the  regulations 
prescribed  fifty  machine  guns  as  the  equipment  for  an 
infantry  division.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  the  stand- 
ard equipment  of  a  division  called  for  260  heavy  machine 
guns  and  768  light  automatic  rifles.  Of  the  heavy  machine 
guns  with  a  division,  only  168  were  supposed  to  be  in 
active  service,  the  remainder  being  in  reserve  or  in  use  for 
anti-aircraft  work.  But  the  comparison  of  the  two  standards 
of  equipment  shows  the  tendency  toward  machine  methods 
in  the  wholesale  killing  of  modem  warfare  and  indicates  the 
fresh  demands  made  upon  the  ordnance  organization  to  procure 
this  additional  machinery  of  death.  Moreover,  when  the  fight- 
ing came  to  an  end  the  A.  E.  F.  was  on  the  point  of  adding 
to  its  regimental  and  divisional  equipment  a  further  large 
number  of  automatic  rifles. 

The  day  of  the  horse  was  passing  in  the  World  War,  so  far 
as  his  connection  with  the  mobile  artillery  was  concerned,  and 
the  gasoline  motor  was  taking  his  place,  this  tendency  being 
accelerated  particularly  by  America,  the  greatest  nation  of  all 
in  automotivity.  Trucks  and  tractors  to  pull  the  guns,  motor 
ammunition  trucks  displacing  the  old  horse-drawn  caissons  and 
limbers,  even  self-propelling  platforms  for  the  larger  field 
guns,  with  track-laying,  or  caterpillar,  mounts  supplying  not 
only  mobility  for  the  gun  but  aiming  facilities  as  well — these 
were  the  fresh  developments.  Some  of  these  improvements 
were  produced  and  put  in  the  field;  the  others  were  under 
development  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice.  The  whole  tend- 
ency toward  motorization  served  to  complicate  ordnance 
production  in  this  country,  not  only  in  the  supply  of  the 
weapons  and  traction  devices  themselves,  but  also  in  the  pro- 
duction of  increased  supplies  of  ammunition;  for  these  im- 
provements also  tended  to  increase  the  rapidity  with  which 
bullets  and  shell  were  consumed. 

The  total  cost  of  the  ordnance  alone  required  to  equip  the 
first  5,000,000  Americans  called  to  arms  was  estimated  to  be 
between  $12,000,000,000  and  $13,000,000,000.  This  was 
equal  to  about  half  of  all  the  money  appropriated  by  Con- 


Photo  from    Onlnaiut-  I)f/uirt»it'nt 

AMERICAN-BUILT  ORDNANCE  AT  ABERDEEN,  MARYLAND 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

INTERIOR  OF  A  GREAT  SHELL  FACTORY 


^-" 

,ji^^,0ViM^-..p.\-^Jl.'>      ■'«>--. '^"V''>Sl»^Hl£j^'^ 

..-  --„.-.-^ 

i 

Phut^  jt^iii   OidnuhLL   btiartmcnt 


8-INCH  HOWITZERS  BUILT  IN  AMERICA 


Photo  from  Ordnance  Department 

CAISSONS  PARKED  IN  PROVING  GROUND 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  33 

gresses  of  the  United  States  from  the  first  Continental  Con- 
gress down  to  our  declaration  of  war  against  Germany — out 
of  which  appropriations  had  been  paid  the  cost  of  every  war 
we  ever  fought,  including  the  Civil  War,  and  the  whole  enor- 
mous expense  of  the  Government  in  every  official  activity  of 
a  hundred  and  forty  years.  To  equip  with  ordnance  an  army 
of  this  size  in  the  period  projected  meant  the  expenditure  of 
money  at  a  rate  which  would  build  a  Panama  Canal  complete 
every  thirty  days. 

So  much  for  some  of  the  difficulties  of  the  situation.  In  our 
favor  we  had  the  greatest  industrial  organization  in  the  world, 
engineering  skill  to  rank  with  any,  a  race  of  people  tradition- 
ally versatile  in  applying  the  forces  of  machinery  to  the  needs 
of  mankind,  inventive  genius  which  could  match  its  accom- 
plishments with  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world  added  together, 
a  capacity  for  organization  that  proved  to  be  astonishingly 
effective  in  such  an  effort  as  the  nation  made  in  1917  and  1918, 
enormous  stores  of  raw  materials  (the  country  being  more 
nearly  self-sufficient  in  this  respect  than  any  other  nation  of 
the  globe),  magnificent  facilities  of  inland  transportation,  a 
vast  body  of  skilled  mechanics,  and  a  selective-service  law 
designed  to  take  for  the  Army  men  nonessential  to  the  nation's 
industrial  efforts  for  war  and  to  leave  in  the  workshops  the 
men  whose  skill  could  not  be  withdrawn  without  subtracting 
somewhat  from  the  national  store  of  industrial  ability. 

It  only  remains  to  sketch  in  swift  outline  something  of  the 
accomplishments  of  the  American  ordnance  effort.  In  general  it 
may  be  said  that  those  projects  of  the  ordnance  program  to 
which  were  assigned  the  shorter  time  limits  were  most  suc- 
cessful. There  never  was  a  time  when  the  production  of  smoke- 
less powder  and  high  explosives  was  not  sufficient  for  our  own 
requirements,  with  large  quantities  left  over  for  both  France 
and  England. 

America,  in  nineteen  months  of  development,  built  over 
2,500,000  shoulder  rifles,  a  quantity  greater  than  that  pro- 
duced by  either  England  or  France  in  the  same  period,  al- 
though both  those  countries  in  April,  1917,  at  the  time  when 


34  THE  ARxMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


FIGURE  9 

Production  of  Rifles,  Machine  Guns,  and  Ammunition: 
France  and  United  States  Compared  with  Great  Britain 

Average  Monthly  Rate,  July,  August,  and  September,  1918 

Machine  guns  and  machine  rifles:  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain  10,947  B^BMBBa^  100 

France  12,126  ^bb^^^b  11 1 

United  States  27,270  ^^^mMBassBBOB^^^^H  249 

Rifles: 

Great  Britain  112,821       ai^HmBH  100 
France  40,522       g^B  36 

United  States  233,562 

Rifle  and  machine  gun  ammunition: 
Great  Britain  259,769,000 

France  139,845,000      ^b^  54 

United  States  277,894,000 

Total  Production,  April  6,  1917 ,  to  November  11,  1918 

Machine  guns  and  machine  rifles:  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain  181,404  ^^^^hhi  100 

France  229,238  maaa^mi^^m  126 

United   States  181,662 

Rifles: 

Great  Britain  1,971,764 

France  1,416,056 

United  States  2,506,742 

Rifle  and  machine  gun  ammunition : 
Great  Briuin  3,486,127,000 

France  2,983,675,000 

United  States  2,879,148,000 


we  Started,  had  their  rifle  production  already  in  a  high  stage 
of  development.  (See  Figure  9.)  (The  Franco-British  pro- 
duction of  rifles  dropped  in  rate  in  1918,  because  there  was  no 
longer  need  for  original  rifle  equipment  for  new  troops.) 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  35 

In  the  nineteen  months  of  war,  American  factories  produced 
over  2,879,000,000  rounds  of  rifle  and  machine  gun  ammuni- 
tion. This  was  somewhat  less  than  the  production  in  Great  Brit- 
ain during  the  same  period  and  somewhat  less  than  that  of 
France;  but  America  began  the  effort  from  a  standing  start, 
and  in  the  latter  part  of  the  war  was  turning  out  ammunition 
at  a  monthly  rate  twice  that  of  France  and  somewhat  higher 
than  that  of  Great  Britain.  (See  Figure  9,) 

Between  April  6,  1917,  and  November  11,  1918,  America 
produced  as  many  machine  guns  and  automatic  rifles  as  Great 
Britain  did  in  the  same  period,  and  8 1  per  cent  of  the  number 
produced  by  France ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  effort  America  was 
building  machine  guns  and  machine  rifles  nearly  three  times 
as  rapidly  as  Great  Britain  and  more  than  twice  as  fast  as 
France.  (Figure  9.)  When  it  is  considered  that  a  long  time 
must  elapse  before  machine  gun  factories  can  be  equipped 
with  the  necessary  machine  tools  and  fixtures,  the  effort  of 
America  in  this  respect  can  be  fairly  appreciated. 

Prior  to  November  11,  1918,  America  produced  in  the  75- 
millimeter  size  alone  about  4,250,000  high-explosive  shell,  over 
500,000  gas  shell,  and  over  7,250,000  shrapnel.  Of  the  high- 
explosive  shell  produced,  2,735,000  were  shipped  to  France  up 
to  November  15,  1918.  In  all,  8,500,000  rounds  of  shell  of  this 
caliber  were  floated,  nearly  two-thirds  of  it  shrapnel.  Ameri- 
can troops  on  the  line  expended  a  total  of  6,250,000  rounds 
of  75-millimeter  ammunition,  largely  high-explosive  shell  of 
French  manufacture,  drawn  from  the  Franco- American  ammu- 
nition pool.  American  high-explosive  shell  were  tested  in 
France  by  the  French  ordnance  experts  and  approved  for  use 
by  the  French  artillery  just  before  the  armistice. 

In  artillery  ammunition  rounds  of  all  calibers,  America  at 
the  end  of  the  war  was  turning  out  unfilled  shell  faster  than 
the  French  and  nearly  as  fast  as  the  British ;  but,  because  of  the 
shortage  of  adapters  and  boosters — a  shortage  rapidly  being 
overcome  at  the  end  of  the  war — the  rate  of  production  of 
completed   rounds   was  only  about  one-third   that  of  either 


36  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Great  Britain  or  France.  In  total  production  during  her  nine- 
teen months  of  belligerency,  America  turned  out  more  than 
one-quarter  as  many  unfilled  rounds  as  Great  Britain  did  in 
the  same  time  and  about  one-quarter  as  many  as  came  from  the 
French  munition  plants.  In  completed  rounds  alone  did 
America  lag  far  behind  the  records  of  the  two  principal  Allies 
during  1917  and  1918.  (Figure  10.) 


FIGURE  10 

'Production  of  Artillery  Ammunition:  France  and  United 
States  Compared  with  Great  Britain 

[Types  for  use  in  A.  E.  F.] 


Monthly  Rate  at  End  of  War 

Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

w^mmmmm^^^t^^i^mammm  100 


Unfilled  rounds: 

Great  Britain 

7,748,000 

France 

6,661,000 

United  States 

7,044,000 

Complete  rounds: 

Great  Britain 

7,347.000 

France 

7,638,000 

United  States 

2,712,000 

86 
■  91 


100 
■  104 


37 


Total  Production,  April  U  1917,  to  November  11,  1918 
Unfilled  rounds:  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain    138,357,000  mmimm^^a^^^^^mmm^^  100 

France  156,170,000  m^mMmmmm^^^^^^^^^^mam  113 

United  States      38,623,000  ^^^^  28 

Complete  rounds: 

Great  Britain    121,739,000  i^^^^^^^^m^K^^^m^mm  100 


France  149,827,000    wmmmammm^mmmKt^^^^^m^^^^^  123 

United  States      17,260,000    ■■■  14 


The  production  of  completed  rounds  of  artillery  ammuni- 
tion was  gaining  rapidly,  beginning  with  the  early  summer  of 
1918,  and  in  the  month  of  October  was  approaching  half  the 
rate  of  manufacture  in  Great  Britain  or  in  France.  Figure  1 1 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM 


37 


shows  graphically  the  rate  at  which  the  artillery  ammunition 
deliveries  were  expanding. 


FIGURE  11 

Complete  Rounds  of  Artillery  Ammunition  Produced  for 

the  A.  E.  F.  Each  Month  during  igi8  {Figures 

in  Thousands  of  Rounds) 


3062 


130      138 
Jan.    Feb.     Mar.    Apr.     May    Jun.    Jul.    Aug.    Sep.    Oct.    Nov.    Dec. 


In  artillery  proper,  the  war  ended  too  soon  for  American 
industry  to  arrive  on  a  great  production  basis.  The  production 
of  heavy  ordnance  units  is  necessarily  a  long  and  arduous 
effort,  even  when  plants  are  in  existence  and  mechanical  forces 
are  trained  in  the  work.  America  had  in  large  part  to  build  her 
ordnance  industry  from  the  ground  up — buildings,  machinery, 
and  all — and  after  that  to  recruit  and  train  the  working  forces. 
The  national  experience  in  artillery  production  in  the  World 


38 


THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


FIGURE  12 

Complete  Units  of  Mobile  Artillery  Produced  for  the 
Army  'Each  Month  during  igi8 


433 


Jan.    Feb.     Mar.    Apr.     May    Jun.    Jul.    Aug.    Sep.    Oct.    Nov.    Dec. 


War  most  like  our  own  was  that  of  Great  Britain,  which  started 
from  scratch,  even  as  we  did.  It  is  interesting,  then,  to  know 
how  Great  Britain  expanded  her  artillery  industry;  and  the 
testimony  of  the  British  Ministry  of  Munitions  may  throw  a 
new  light  on  our  own  efforts  in  this  respect.  In  discussing 
artillery  in  the  war,  the  British  Ministry  of  Munitions  issued  a 
statement  from  which  the  following  is  an  excerpt : 

It  is  very  difficult  to  say  how  long  it  was  before  the  British  army  was 
thoroughly  equipped  with  artillery  and  ammunition.  The  ultimate  size 
of  the  army  aimed  at  was  continually  increased  during  the  first  three 
years  of  the  war,  so  that  the  ordnance  requirements  were  continually 
increasing.  It  is  probably  true  to  say  that  the  equipment  of  the  army  as 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  39 

planned  in  the  early  summer  of  1915  was  completed  by  September, 
1916.  As  a  result,  however,  of  the  battle  of  Verdun  and  the  early  stages 
of  the  battle  of  the  Somme,  a  great  change  was  made  in  the  standard 
of  equipment  per  division  of  the  army,  followed  by  further  increases 
in  September,  1916.  The  army  was  not  completely  equipped  on  this  new 
scale  until  spring,  1918. 

Thus  it  took  England  three  and  a  half  years  to  equip  her 
army  completely  with  artillery  and  ammunition  on  the  scale 
called  for  at  the  end  of  the  war.  On  this  basis  America,  when 
the  armistice  came,  had  two  years  before  her  to  equal  the  record 
of  Great  Britain  in  this  respect. 

In  the  production  of  gun  bodies  ready  for  mounting,  the 
attainments  of  American  ordnance  were  more  striking.  At  the 
end  of  the  fighting  America  had  passed  the  British  rate  of 
production  and  was  approaching  that  of  the  French.  In  totals 
for  the  whole  war  period  (April  6,  1917,  to  November  11, 
1918)  the  American  production  of  gun  bodies  could  scarcely 
be  compared  with  that  of  either  the  British  or  the  French,  for 
the  reason  that  it  required  many  months  to  build  up  the  forg- 
ing plants  before  production  could  go  ahead. 

In  completed  artillery  units  the  American  rate  of  production 
at  the  end  of  the  war  was  rapidly  approaching  that  of  the 
British  and  the  French.  In  total  production  of  complete  units 
in  the  nineteen  months  of  war,  American  ordnance  turned  out 
about  one-quarter  as  many  as  came  from  the  British  ordnance 
plants  and  less  than  one-fifth  as  many  as  the  French  produced 
in  the  same  period.  Figure  13  represents  visually  America's 
comparative  performances  in  the  production  of  gun  bodies  and 
complete  artillery  units.  (See  also  Figure  12.) 

Stress  has  sometimes  been  laid  upon  the  fact  that  the  Ameri- 
can Army  was  required  to  purchase  considerable  artillery  and 
other  supplies  abroad,  the  latter  including  airplanes,  motor 
trucks,  food  and  clothing,  and  numerous  other  materials. 
Balanced  against  this  fact  is  the  consideration  that  every  time 
we  spent  a  dollar  with  the  Allied  governments  for  ordnance, 
we  sold  ordnance,  or  materials  for  conversion  into  munitions, 


40  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

to  the  Allied  governments  to  the  value  of  five  dollars.  The 
Interallied  Ordnance  Agreement  provided  that  certain  muni- 
tions plants  in  the  United  States  should  continue  to  furnish 
supplies  to  the  Allies,  and  that  additional  plants  for  the  Allies 
should  be  built  up  and  fostered  by  us.  Thus,  while  we  were 
purchasing  artiller}^  and  ammunition  from  the  Allies  we  were 


FIGURE  13 

Production  of  Artillery:  France  and  United  States 
Compared  with  Great  Britain 

Average  Monthly  Rate  at  End  of  War 

Gun  bodies  {new):  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain  802  mmmmma^^mmmm^m^m  100 

France  1>138  ^^^^^^■^^^^^^■■■^■^^H  142 

United  States  832  ^^^^^^^^mi^^^ma^  104 

Complete  units: 

Great  Britain  486  ^^^^^^ammmm^^^^  100 

France  659  ^^^mmmmmmmmimmmm^^i^m^  136 

United  States  412  mi^a^mmmimmmK^^  85 

Total  Production,  April  1,  1917,  to  November  11,  1918 

Gun  bodies  {new):  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain  11,852  m^^^m^m^m^^^mmm  100 

France  19,492  ^mmmmm^ma^^mammmm^^^mm^^  164 

United  States  4,275  i^h^^  36 

Complete  units: 

Great  Britain  8,065  ■■■■^■^^^^i^^^^  100 

France  11,056  mmmmmmm^^^^^K^^mmaammm  137 

United  States  2,008  t^^m  25 


shipping  to  them  great  quantities  of  raw  materials,  half-com- 
pleted parts,  and  completely  assembled  units,  and  such  war- 
time commodities  as  powder  and  explosives,  forgings  for  can- 
non and  other  heavy  devices,  motors,  and  structural  steel.  The 
following  table  shows  the  ordnance  balance  sheet  between 
America  and  the  Allied  governments : 


THE  ORDNANCE  PROBLEM  41 


Purchases  and  Sales  from 

April  6,  191  y. 

to  November  11, 

igi8 

Purchases :     By    Army     Ordnance     Department     from 
Allied  governments 

$ 

450,234,256.85 

Sales : 
By  Army  Ordnance  Department  to  Al 

ments 
By   United   States   manufacturers   other 

Ordnance   Department   to   Allied   go 

Total 

ied   govern- 

than   Army 
vernments 

$ 
2 

$2 

200,616,402.00 
,094,787,984.00 

,295,404,386.00 

The  credit  for  the  ordnance  record  must  go  not  merely  to 
those  men  who  wore  the  uniform  and  were  part  of  the  ordnance 
organization.  Rather,  it  is  due  to  American  science,  engineer- 
ing, and  industry,  all  of  which  combined  their  best  talents  to 
make  the  ordnance  development  worthy  of  America's  greatness. 


CHAPTER  III 
GUN  PRODUCTION 

THE  sole  use  of  a  gun  is  to  throw  a  projectile.  The 
earliest  projectile  was  a  stone  thrown  by  the  hand  and 
arm  of  man,  in  an  attack  upon  either  an  enemy  or  a 
beast  that  was  being  hunted  for  food.  Both  of  these  uses  of 
thrown  projectiles  persist  to  this  day,  and  during  all  time, 
from  prehistoric  days  until  now,  every  man  who  has  had  a 
projectile  to  throw  has  been  steadily  seeking  for  a  longer  range 
and  a  heavier  projectile. 

The  man  who  could  throw  the  heaviest  stone  the  longest 
distance  was  the  most  powerfully  armed.  In  the  Biblical  battle 
between  David  and  Goliath,  the  arm  of  David  was  strength- 
ened and  lengthened  by  a  leather  sling  of  simple  construction. 
Much  practice  had  given  the  young  shepherd  muscular  strength 
and  direction,  and  his  longer  arm  and  straighter  aim  gave  him 
power  to  overcome  his  more  heavily  accoutered  adversary. 

Later,  machines  were  developed  after  the  fashion  of  a 
crossbow  mounted  upon  a  small  wooden  carriage,  usually  a 
hollowed  trough  open  on  top,  upon  which  a  heavy  stone  was 
laid.  The  thong  of  the  crossbow  was  drawn  by  a  powerful 
screw  operated  by  man  power,  and  the  crossbow  arrangement, 
when  released,  would  throw  a  stone  weighing  many  pounds 
quite  a  distance  over  the  walls  of  a  besieged  city  or  from  such 
walls  into  the  camps  and  ranks  of  the  besiegers.  This  again  was 
an  attempt  by  mechanical  means  to  develop  and  lengthen  the 
stroke  of  the  arm  and  the  weight  of  the  projectile. 

With  the  development  of  explosives,  which  began  much 
earlier  than  many  persons  suppose,  there  came  a  still  greater 
range  and  weight  of  projectile  thrown,  although  the  first  guns 
were  composed  of  mere  staves  of  wood  fitted  together  and 
hooped  up  like  a  long,  slender  barrel,  and  wound  with  wet 


GUN  PRODUCTION  43 

rawhide  in  many  folds,  which,  when  dried,  exerted  a  compres- 
sive force  upon  the  staves  of  the  barrel  exactly  as  do  the  steel 
hoops  of  barrels  used  in  ordinary  commercial  life  to-day. 

This,  the  first  gun,  sufficed  for  a  long  while,  until  the  age 
of  iron  came.  And  then  the  same  principle  of  gun  construction 
was  followed,  as  is  seen  in  that  historic  gun,  the  "Mons  Meg," 
in  the  castle  at  Edinburgh,  The  barrel  of  that  gun  was  made  of 
square  bars  of  iron  placed  lengthwise,  around  which  similar 
bars  of  iron  were  wrapped  hot  to  confine  them  in  place  and 
to  give  more  resisting  power  than  was  possible  with  the  wooden 
staves  and  the  rawhide  hooping. 

Thus,  all  during  the  age  of  iron,  gun  development  steadily 
progressed.  Every  military  power  was  always  striving,  with 
the  aid  of  its  best  engineers,  designers,  and  manufacturers,  to 
get  a  stronger  gun,  either  with  or  without  a  heavier  projectile; 
striving  always  for  greater  power.  As  a  culminating  develop- 
ment, we  find  in  March,  1918,  the  now  famous  long-range  gun 
of  the  Germans,  which  was  at  that  time  trained  upon  Paris, 
where  it  successfully  delivered  a  shell  punctually  every  twenty 
minutes  for  a  good  part  of  each  day  until  the  gun  was  worn 
out.  This  occurred  after  a  comparatively  small  number  of 
shots,  probably  not  more  than  seventy-five  in  all.  The  rapid 
wearing  out  was  due  to  the  immense  demands  of  the  long  range 
upon  the  material  of  the  gun.  The  Germans  in  the  shelling  of 
Paris  used  three  of  these  long-range  weapons  at  a  distance  of 
about  seventy  miles,  and  183  shell  are  known  to  have  fallen 
in  the  city. 

The  Germans  evidently  calculated  with  great  care  and 
experience  upon  the  factors  leading  up  to  this  famous  long- 
range  gun,  with  its  effective  shooting  distance  of  approxi- 
mately seventy  miles,  a  range  which,  in  the  opinion  of  our 
experts,  it  is  now  fairly  easy  for  an  experienced  designer  and 
manufacturer  to  equal  and  excel  at  will.  In  fact,  one  would 
hesitate  to  place  a  limit  upon  the  range  attainable  by  a  gun 
that  it  is  now  possible  to  design  and  build.  In  this  connection 
it  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  great  French  ordnance  works 
at  Le  Creusot  produced  in  1892  the  first  known  and  well- 


44  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

authenticated  long-range  gun,  which  was  constructed  from 
the  design  of  a  1 2-inch  gun,  but  bored  down  to  throw  a  6-inch 
projectile.  Instead  of  the  usual  eight  miles  expected  from  the 
flight  of  a  6-inch  shell,  this  early  Creusot  long-range  gun  gave 
a  range  of  approximately  twenty-one  miles  with  a  6-inch 
projectile,  using  a  1 2-inch  gun's  powder  charge. 

Closely  connected  with  the  development  of  the  modem  gun 
itself,  and  a  necessary  element  of  the  gun's  successful  use,  is  the 
requirement  that  the  weapon  itself  be  easily  transported  from 
point  to  point,  where  its  available  range  and  capacity  for 
throwing  projectiles  can  be  made  of  maximum  use.  This 
requires  a  gun  carriage  which  contains  within  itself  various 
functions,  the  primary  one  being  that  of  establishing  the  gun 
in  the  position  where  it  can  be  made  most  effective  against 
the  enemy.  Then,  too,  the  gun  carriage  must  have  stability  in 
order  to  withstand  and  absorb  the  enormous  recoil  energies  let 
loose  by  the  firing  of  the  gun.  It  is  obvious  that  the  force  which 
propels  the  projectile  forward  is  equal  to  the  reacting  force 
to  the  rear,  and  in  order  to  care  for,  absorb,  and  distribute  to 
the  earth  this  reacting  force  to  the  rear,  the  carriage  must  have 
within  itself  some  peculiar  and  important  properties.  To 
this  end  there  is  provided  what  is  known  as  a  "brake,"  which 
permits  the  gun,  upon  the  moment  of  firing,  to  slide  backward 
bodily  within  the  controlling  apparatus  mounted  upon  a  fixed 
carriage. 

The  sliding  of  the  whole  gun  to  the  rear  by  means  of  the 
mechanism  of  the  brake  is  controlled,  as  to  speed  and  time, 
by  springs,  by  compressed  air,  and  by  compressed  oil,  either 
all  together  or  in  combinations  of  two  or  three  of  these  agen- 
cies; so  that  the  whole  recoil  energy  is  absorbed  and  the  rear- 
ward action  of  the  gun  brought  to  rest  in  a  fraction  of  a  second 
and  in  a  few  inches  of  travel.  The  strains  are  distributed  from 
the  recoil  mechanism  to  the  fixed  portion  of  the  carriage, 
necessarily  anchored  to  the  ground  by  means  of  spades,  which 
the  recoil  force  of  each  shot  sets  more  firmly  into  the  ground, 
so  that  the  whole  apparatus  is  thus  steadily  held  in  place  for 
successive  shots. 


GUN  PRODUCTION  45 

In  mobile  artillery,  again,  rapid  firing  is  a  prime  essential. 
The  75-millimeter  gun  of  modern  manufacture  is  capable  of 
being  fired  at  a  rate  in  excess  of  twenty  shots  a  minute — that  is, 
a  shot  every  three  seconds.  Seldom,  however,  is  a  gun  served  as 
rapidly  as  this.  The  more  usual  rate  of  fire  is  six  shots  a  minute, 
or  one  about  each  ten  seconds;  and  this  rate  of  fire  can  be 
maintained  in  the  75-millimeter  gun  with  great  accuracy  over 
a  comparatively  long  period. 

The  larger  guns  are  served  at  proportionately  slower  rates, 
until,  as  the  calibers  progress  to  the  14-inch  rifles,  which  have 
been  set  up  on  railway  mounts  as  well  as  on  fixed  emplace- 
ments for  seacoast  defense,  the  rate  of  fire  is  reduced  to  one 
shot  in  three  minutes  for  railway  mounts,  and  to  one  shot  a 
minute  for  seacoast  mounts,  although  upon  occasions  a  more 
rapid  rate  of  fire  can  be  reached. 

Under  rapid-fire  conditions,  the  gun  becomes  extremely  hot, 
owing  to  the  heat  generated  by  the  combustion  of  the  powder 
within  the  gun  at  pressures  as  high  as  35,000  pounds  or  more 
to  the  square  inch,  pressures  generated  at  the  moment  of  fire. 
This  heat  is  communicated  through  the  walls  of  the  gun  and 
taken  off  by  the  cooling  properties  of  the  air.  Nevertheless, 
the  wall  of  the  gun  becomes  so  hot  that  it  would  scorch  or  burn 
a  hand  laid  upon  it.  Rapid  fire  and  the  consequent  heating  of 
the  gun  lessen  the  effective  life  of  the  weapon,  because  the  hot 
powder  gases  react  more  rapidly  on  hot  metal  than  on  cold; 
hence  a  gun  will  last  many  rounds  longer  if  fired  at  a  slow 
rate. 

It  may  be  helpful  to  keep  in  mind  throughout  that,  as  was 
stated  at  the  very  beginning  of  this  chapter,  the  sole  purpose  of 
a  gun  is  to  fire  a  projectile.  All  other  operations  connected  with 
the  life  of  a  gun — its  manufacture,  its  transportation  to  the 
place  where  it  is  to  be  used,  its  aiming,  its  loading,  and  all  its 
functions  and  operations — are  bound  up  in  the  single  purpose 
of  actually  firing  the  shot. 

Consider  now  for  a  moment  the  life  of,  let  us  say,  one  of 
the  14-inch  guns.  In  the  great  steel  mills  it  requires  hundreds, 
perhaps  thousands,  of  workmen  to  constitute  the  force  neces- 


46  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

sary  to  handle  the  enormous  masses  of  steel  through  the 
various  processes  which  finally  result  in  the  finished  gun.  From 
the  first  operation  in  the  steel  mill  it  requires  perhaps  as  long 
as  ten  months  to  produce  the  gun,  ready  for  the  first  test.  Dur- 
ing the  ten  months  of  manufacture  of  one  of  these  14-inch 
rifles  there  has  been  expended  for  the  gun  and  its  carriage 
approximately  $200,000.  (Of  course,  although  it  requires  ten 
months  to  make  a  final  delivery  of  one  gun  after  the  first 
process  is  commenced,  it  should  be  remembered  that  yet  other 
guns  are  following  in  series,  and  that  in  a  well-equipped 
ordnance  factory  two  and  perhaps  three  guns  a  month  of  this 
kind  can  be  turned  out  continuously,  if  required.)  Remember- 
ing that  it  requires  ten  months  to  produce  one  such  14-inch 
rifle  and  that  its  whole  purpose  is  to  fire  a  shot,  consider  now 
the  time  required  to  fire  this  shot.  As  the  primer  is  fired  and 
the  powder  charge  ignited,  the  projectile  begins  to  move  for- 
ward in  the  bore  of  the  gun  at  an  increasingly  rapid  rate,  so 
that,  by  the  time  it  emerges  from  the  muzzle  and  starts  on  its 
errand  of  death  and  destruction,  it  has  taken  from  a  thirtieth 
to  a  fiftieth  of  a  second  in  time,  depending  upon  certain 
conditions.  Assuming  that  a  fiftieth  of  a  second  has  been  taken 
up  and  that  the  life  of  a  large  high-pressure  gun  at  a  normal 
rate  of  firing  is  1 50  shots,  it  is  obvious  that  in  the  actual  firing 
of  these  150  shots  only  three  seconds  of  time  are  consumed. 
Therefore,  the  active  life  of  the  gun,  which  it  has  taken  ten 
months  to  build,  is  but  three  seconds  long  in  terms  of  the 
actual  performance  of  its  function  of  throwing  a  shot. 

However,  after  the  gun  has  lived  its  life  of  150  shots  it  is  a 
comparatively  simple  and  inexpensive  matter  to  bore  out  the 
worn-out  liner  and  insert  a  new  liner,  thus  refitting  the  gun  for 
service,  with  an  expenditure  of  time  and  money  much  less 
than  would  be  required  in  the  preparation  of  a  new  gun. 

As  the  size  of  the  powder  charge  decreases,  a  progressively 
longer  life  of  the  walls  of  the  bore  of  a  gun  is  attained,  so  that 
we  have  had  the  experience  of  a  75-millimeter  gun  firing 
12,000  rounds  without  serious  effect  upon  the  accuracy  of  fire. 
Large-caliber  guns,  such  as   12-inch  howitzers,  with  the  re- 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Depattinent 


CHARGING  FLOOR  OF  AN  OPEN  HEARTH 
FURNACE  BUILDING 


Photo  from  Midvale  Steel  Company 

BIG  GUNS  READY  TO  BE  SHIPPED 


GUN  PRODUCTION  47 

duced  powder  charge  required  for  the  lower  muzzle  velocities 
employed  in  howitzer  attack,  have  retained  their  accuracy  of 
fire  after  10,000  rounds. 

Because  in  action  guns  are  served  with  ammunition,  aimed, 
fired,  and  cared  for  by  a  crew  of  men  carefully  trained  to 
every  motion  involved  in  the  successful  use  of  the  gun,  it  is 
most  essential  that  the  design  and  its  calculation  and  the 
material  and  its  manufacture  shall  all  be  such  as  will  foster 
the  morale  of  the  crew  that  serves  the  gun.  Each  man  must  be 
confident  to  the  very  last  bit  of  fiber  in  his  make-up  that  his 
gun  is  the  best  gun  in  the  world,  that  it  will  behave  properly, 
that  it  will  protect  him  and  his  fellow  soldiers  who  are  caring 
for  the  welfare  of  their  country,  that  it  will  respond  accurately 
and  well  to  every  demand  made  upon  it,  that  it  will  not  yield 
or  burst,  that  it  will  not  shoot  wild — in  fine,  that  it  will  in 
every  respect  give  the  result  required  in  its  operation.  It  has 
been  known  for  generations  that  to  this  end  the  requirements 
of  manufacture  of  ordnance  material,  particularly  for  the  body 
of  the  gun,  are  of  the  very  highest  order  and  call  for  the  finest 
attainable  quality  in  material,  workmanship,  and  design.  It 
is  well  known  that  the  steel  employed  in  the  manufacture 
of  guns  must  be  of  the  highest  quality  and  of  the  finest 
grade  for  its  purpose.  It  requires  the  most  expert  knowl- 
edge of  the  manufacture  of  steel  to  obtain  this  grade  and 
quality.  Until  recently  this  knowledge  in  America  was  con- 
fined to  the  ordnance  officers  of  the  Army  and  of  the  Navy 
and  to  a  comparatively  small  number  of  manufacturers, — not 
more  than  four  in  all, — and  only  two  of  these  manufacturers 
had  provided  the  necessary  equipment  and  appliances  for  the 
manufacture  of  complete  guns. 

Until  1914  the  number  of  guns  whose  manufacture  was 
provided  for  in  this  country,  as  well  as  in  the  countries  of 
Europe,  excepting  Germany,  was  small.  The  sum  total  of 
guns  purchased  by  the  United  States  from  the  two  factories 
mentioned  did  not  exceed  an  average  of  fifty-five  guns  a  year  in 
calibers  of  from  3-inch  to  14-inch;  and  the  stock  of  guns  which 
had  been  provided  for  us  by  this  low  rate  of  increase  of  manu- 


48  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

facture  was  a  pitifully  small  one  with  which  to  enter  a  war 
of  the  magnitude  of  the  one  through  which  this  country  has 
just  passed.  The  two  factories  in  question,  not  having  been 
encouraged  by  large  purchases  of  ordnance  material,  as  similar 
industries  were  in  Germany,  were  not  capable  of  volume  pro- 
duction when  we  entered  the  war.  But  at  the  same  time  the 
gun  bodies  produced  by  these  concerns  at  least  equaled  in 
quality  those  built  in  any  other  country  on  earth.  The  big-gun- 
making  art  was,  then,  in  existence  in  this  country  and  was 
maintained  as  to  quality;  but  it  was  most  insufficient  as  to 
the  quantity  of  the  production  available. 

When  the  United  States  faced  the  war  in  April,  1917, 
arrangements  were  entered  into  to  obtain  in  the  shortest  space 
of  time  an  adequate  supply  of  finished  artillery  of  all  calibers 
required  by  our  troops.  Many  thousands  of  forgings  for  guns, 
and  finished  guns,  too,  had  been  ordered  by  the  Allies  from  the 
few  gunmakers  in  this  country;  and  these  makers  were,  when 
we  entered  the  conflict,  fully  occupied  for  at  least  a  year  ahead 
with  orders  from  the  French  and  English  ordnance  depart- 
ments. All  this  production  was  immediately  useful  and  avail- 
able for  the  combined  armies  of  the  Allies,  and  therefore  it  was 
allowed  to  go  forward,  the  forgings  preventing  a  gap  in  the 
output  of  the  finished  articles  from  the  British  and  French 
arsenals  which  were  then  using  the  semi-finished  guns  made  in 
the  old  factories  in  existence  in  this  country  in  April,  1917. 

Some  idea  of  the  volume  of  this  production  in  this  country 
will  be  gained  from  the  following  table  of  material  supplied  to 
the  Allies  between  April,  1917,  and  the  signing  of  the  armi- 
stice, November  11,  1918: 


Guns   of   calibers   from   3-inch    to   9.5-inch    furnished    to    the 

Allies        ..........  1,102 

Additional  gun  forgings  furnished  to  the  Allies       .  tubes  14,623 

Shell    and    shell    forgings    furnished    to    the    Allies    in    this 

period        ........  pieces     5,018,451 


In  supplying  all  this  material  from  our  regular  sources  of 


GUN  PRODUCTION  49 

manufacture  in  this  country  to  the  finishing  arsenals  of  the 
Allies,  we  were  but  maintaining  our  position  as  a  part  of  the 
general  source  of  supply.  The  plan  of  the  French  and  British 
ordnance  engineers  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  in  1914  was  to 
build  their  factories  as  quickly  and  as  extensively  as  could  be 
done.  By  the  time  the  United  States  entered  the  war,  all  these 
factories  were  in  operation  and  clamoring  for  raw  material  at 
a  rate  far  in  excess  of  that  which  could  be  attained  by  the 
home  steel  makers  in  Great  Britain  and  France.  Consequently 
their  incursions  into  the  semi-finished  ordnance  material  sup- 
plies in  the  United  States  were  necessary.  In  sending  these 
large  quantities  of  our  materials  abroad,  when  we  needed 
them  ourselves,  we  were  distinctly  adding  to  the  rate  and 
quantity  of  the  supply  of  finished  ordnance  for  the  use  of  our 
own  Army  in  the  field,  as  well  as  being  at  the  same  time  of 
inestimable  help  to  the  Allies;  for  the  French  and  British  had 
agreed  to  supply  our  first  armies  with  finished  fighting  weapons 
while  we  were  giving  them  the  raw  materials  which  they  so 
badly  needed. 

The  total  of  four  gunmakers  in  America  was  meanwhile 
being  expanded  into  a  total  of  nineteen.  All  these  nineteen 
factories,  by  the  month  of  October,  1918,  were  in  practically 
full  operation.  Many  of  them  were  producing  big  guns  at  a 
faster  rate  than  that  for  which  the  plants  had  been  designed. 
In  the  month  of  October,  1918,  with  three  of  the  nineteen 
factories  yet  to  have  their  machine-tool  equipment  completed, 
there  were  produced  2,059  ^^^^  ^^  S^^  forgings  between  the 
3-inch  and  240-millimeter  calibers,  which  is  production  at  the 
rate  of  upward  of  24,000  guns  a  year.  This  figure,  of  course, 
does  not  indicate  anything  of  the  gun-finishing  capacity  of  the 
country;  but  the  expansion  may  be  contrasted  to  the  fact  that 
our  supply  of  finished  guns  prior  to  1917  amounted  to  only 
fifty-five  weapons  a  year. 

Our  chain  of  gun  factories — the  factories  which  were  accom- 
plishing this  remarkable  production — was  forged  of  the  fol- 
lowing links : 

One   at  the  Watertown  Arsenal,   Watertown,   Massachu- 


50 


THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


e 

o 

■a 

<o 

v£)    «^  t^  0^  fS    >^  D 

vO 

r~  vO    D    CO   CO  NO    O 

r^ 

4J 

vO    O    —  00    0\  -^  0\ 

o 

t^   On   Tl-   t^OO    T^   - 

ON  vo  -^  O;00    r<    ■* 

(S 

'> 

r;   CO   •"i-   f;   ■^   (S    — 

n 

W-, 

t^a. 

oT            — 

vO 

«A                — 

o 

U 

■*~* 

It 

^ 

O 

N+H 

CO 

s 

O    Tj-QQ  vO    »^   Tj-  Q 
O    t^OO    O    lo  lo   C^ 

CO 

1^ 

t^  cooo   -   r^  ty-,  - 

CO                      NO    NO               ■* 

s 

0\          —    CO  CO          — 

q 

M     -*            fS 

q 

s:; 

'c 

•"TSi 

(J 

O    (N    O  vO  00    ■* 

o 

r^OO    On   t^   O    O  NO 

r^ 

P 

t! 

^ 

<:>  CO  i^  o  -ri-  — 

— 

CO   —    v^   O  NO    —    CO 

r^ 

Q 

n              M 

\o 

(N                  -^ 

*^. 

u 

^ 

^1 

a 

CO  •*  o    —    (S    ■*  — 

^ 

On   On  i^   1^   Tj-  ■*  vO 

■* 

Q, 

o 
^ 

(S     CO   Vo   CO   <s     — 

i2. 

On  T^  Ti-  r^  Wo  (S    Tj- 
CO              r) 

C^ 

E 

o 

•■>i    -^ 

^ 

y 

Mill 
Plan 

•v^ 

r<    O    -    O    —    CO 

r- 

55 

NO    «o  M    >^no    —    •* 

ON 

u 

—    v^  r^  »^  «^  CO 

o 

>^   CO   (S   NO    CO   —     CO 

•^ 

g 

<:i 

CO                CO 

00 

Tt    (N             -     - 

q 

^    55 

§ 

ON  (s  (s  o  —  (s 

—                    M 

o 

On 

kn 

00  NO    -to    1^—00 
On   ■*  t^NO    r^   -    - 
00               <s 

M 

00 

CO 

^ 

55 
55 

g 
o 

•*--»     S; 

ci 

Tt   -    unOO          00    - 

r>. 

NO    —    ON  CO   (S    On   CO 

CO 

*~* 

^s^ 

a 

O     —     —     -^            (N 

o 

55 

c^  CO  o    r^  M    —    — 

Tl- 

c 

eters 

Asse 

^ 

(S               n 

l^ 

« 

t^            -     (N 

(S 

o 

^ 

M     (S    00     0\    (S 

CO 

O 
"-^-. 

O    CO  O    ■*  >^  ri    >^ 

0^ 

c 
c 

CS 

^  -        o 

1^ 

(S 

55 

O    —    r>.  >^  Tt  (S    — 
q             - 

CO 

4J 

\i 

^ 

J= 

75  M 
lining 

a 

ONOO  vO    "-n 

t^   CO          ON         00 

00 
CO 

CO  On          On  r^  O    CO 

NO     Vri             O^i             (S 

(N                  - 

Tl-   —  00  NO  NO    On   CO 

o 

•sj 

(N                     Tt 

00 

<a 

Tj-  M    (S  NO    —    M 

o 

^  ^ 
^   ^ 

^ 

U 

f^ 

CO                 - 

NO 

'a 

S  ^ 

^! 

-*   (N          vO          00 

o 

t->oo   (s   t^  —   CO  — 

ON 

-Ci, 

(^                      «              CO 

CO 

^ 

'~~i 

»^            —     Tt            M 

^ 

d  Can? 
rious  il 

^ 

(S 

o 

vl 

^^  O           0\          o 

Tl- 

t-4 

(N     •^nO     M             >^ 

On 

-□ 

"3 

CO    -<                             (S 

r^ 

55 

On   -          NO 

t^ 

4= 

<ij    Q 

-si 

-  "^       ^       1^ 

1--. 

'^^ 

»o  O    On   O           ON 

CO 

*^ 

^  ^ 

>^    M 

00 

O    r<         n 

NO 

Si 

K 

Oi   -                        vo 

vO 

On  On         O          - 

ON 

-o 

t; 

q 

<^    (S 

00 

00                 (S          r< 

CO 

c 

S 

^ 

rt 

'->--. 

^ 

b      ^ 

^^Q 

0-,  CO                      — 

On 

■*  O         (S         r^ 

CO 

(N   r>.                   CO 

CO 

o 

~ 

-^ 

n 

4-) 

ci 

, 

, 

11 

.  <5    .1^    .    .  t- 

.  <+;      .    u      •      •    u 

3 

^ 

W               u                        (U 

a          u               V 

a.' 

nti-airci 
gun   . 
.  howitz 
■  gun 
owitzer 
.  howitz 

nti-airci 
gun   . 
.  howitz 
•  gun 
owitzer 
.  howitz 

Il 

(^ 

.2 

'u 

11 

^  «-s  e  e-^  e 

1—1 

rt  ^  g  E  ^  g 

o 

i-S  c  g  g-s  s 

o 

i-s  S  E  g-s  S 

^     S     r^   »^   "^    S     O 

=  ^'^^^  ~  6 

H 

H 

<^"T    "^  >^  «^T    T^ 

i^T    "^  >o  >^  T    ■* 

t->.  CO   Tj-   —    —  00    M 

l-«   CO   Tj-   —     -  00    <N 

GUN  PRODUCTION  51 

setts,  near  Boston,  for  the  manufacture  of  rough-machined  gun 
forgings  of  the  larger  mobile  calibers.  This  factory  was  en- 
tirely built  and  equipped  on  government  land  with  govern- 
ment money,  and  could  produce  rough-machined  gun  forgings 
of  the  highest  quality  at  the  rate  of  two  sets  a  day  for  the 
155-millimeter  G.  P.  F.  rifles,  and  one  set  a  day  for  the  240- 
millimeter  howitzers. 

At  Watervliet  Arsenal,  Watervliet,  New  York,  large  exten- 
sions were  made  to  the  existing  plant,  which  had  always  been 
the  Army's  prime  reliance  for  the  finishing  and  assembly  of 
guns  of  all  calibers,  including  the  very  largest.  This  plant  was 
extended  to  manufacture  complete  four  of  the  240-millimeter 
howitzers  each  day,  and  two  a  day  of  the  155-millimeter 
G.  P.  F.  guns. 

At  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  there  was  constructed  by  the 
Bullard  Engineering  Works  a  complete  new  factory,  capable 
of  turning  out  for  the  United  States  four  155-millimeter 
G.  P.  F.  guns  a  day. 

At  Philadelphia,  the  Tacony  Ordnance  Corporation,  as 
agents  for  the  Government,  erected  complete  a  new  factory, 
officered  and  manned  by  experts  well  trained  and  experienced 
in  the  difficult  art  of  the  manufacture  of  steel  and  gun  forgings. 
On  October  11,  1917,  the  grounds  for  this  great  undertaking 
had  been  merely  staked  out  for  the  outline  of  the  buildings. 
Seven  months  later,  on  May  15,  1918,  the  entire  group  of 
buildings,  a  complete  steel  works  for  every  process  from 
making  the  steel  to  the  final  completion  of  155-millimeter  gun 
forgings,  was  finished  at  a  cost  of  about  $3,000,000.  This 
difficult  and  rapid  building  operation  was  carried  through  suc- 
cessfully during  the  extraordinarily  severe  winter  of  1917- 
1918.  On  June  29,  1918,  the  first  carload  of  gun  forgings  was 
accepted  and  shipped  from  this  plant;  so  that  we  here  review 
the  marvelous  exploit  of  building  a  complete  steel  works  from 
the  bare  ground  forward  to  the  shipment  of  its  first  forgings 
in  a  total  elapsed  time  of  only  eight  and  one-half  months. 

At  another  plant,  the  works  of  the  Midvale  Steel  Company, 
in  Philadelphia,  large  extensions  were  made  to  enable  some 


52  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  the  larger  guns  to  be  produced,  to  be  finished  later  at  the 
Watervliet  Arsenal. 

At  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company's  plant,  Bethlehem,  Penn- 
sylvania, as  early  as  May,  1917J  orders  were  placed  and  appro- 
priations allotted  for  expansions  to  this  enterprise,  to  enable 
a  rapid  output  of  a  larger  number  of  gun  forgings  and  jfinished 
guns. 

Large  extensions  were  made  at  the  works  of  the  Standard 
Steel  Works  Company,  Burnham,  Pennsylvania,  to  increase 
their  existing  forging  and  heat-treating  facilities.  At  this  plant 
two  sets  of  155-millimeter  howitzer  forgings  and  one  set  of 
155-millimeter  gun  forgings  were  produced  each  day. 

At  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  the  plants  of  the  Heppenstall 
Forge  &  Knife  Company  and  the  Edgewater  Steel  Company 
were  extended  so  as  to  provide  for  the  daily  production,  at  the 
first  plant,  of  forgings  for  one  3-inch  anti-aircraft  gun  and  one 
4.7-inch  gun,  and,  at  the  second  plant,  of  forgings  for  one 
155-millimeter  G.  P.  F.  gun  and  one  240-millimeter  howitzer 
a  day. 

At  Columbus,  Ohio,  the  Buckeye  Steel  &  Castings  Company, 
in  combination  with  the  works  of  the  Symington-Anderson 
Company,  at  Rochester,  New  York,  had  their  facilities  ex- 
tended to  provide  for  the  manufacture  each  day  of  six  sets  of 
forgings  for  75-millimeter  guns. 

At  the  Symington-Anderson  Company  in  Rochester,  New 
York,  there  was  provided  a  finishing  plant  for  the  75-milli- 
meter gun  with  a  capacity  of  fifteen  finished  guns  a  day. 

At  Erie,  Pennsylvania,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  achieve- 
ments in  rapid  construction  and  successful  mechanical  opera- 
tion was  performed  by  the  erection  of  a  plant  commenced  in 
July,  1917,  out  of  which  the  first  production  was  shipped  to 
the  Aberdeen  Proving  Ground  in  February,  1918.  The  Ameri- 
can Brake  Shoe  &  Foundry  Company  built  and  operated  this 
plant  as  agents  for  the  Ordnance  Department,  and  much  credit 
is  due  them  for  their  energy  and  organizing  capacity.  It  is 
doubtful  if  history  records  any  similar  enterprise  in  which  guns 
were  turned  out  in  a  plant  seven  months  from  the  date  of 


GUN  PRODUCTION  53 

beginning  the  erection  of  the  factory.  This  plant  was  laid  out 
to  manufacture  ten  of  the  155-millimeter  Schneider-type 
howitzers  a  day,  and  before  the  signing  of  the  armistice  it  had 
more  than  fulfilled  every  expectation  by  regularly  turning  out 
up  to  fifteen  howitzers  a  day,  or  ninety  a  week. 

At  Detroit,  Michigan,  the  Chalkis  Manufacturing  Com- 
pany adapted  an  existing  plant  and  erected  additional  facili- 
ties for  the  manufacture  of  three  3-inch  anti-aircraft  guns  each 
day. 

At  Madison,  Wisconsin,  the  Northwestern  Ordnance  Com- 
pany erected  for  the  United  States  an  entirely  new  factory, 
beautifully  equipped  for  the  manufacture  of  four  guns  a  day 
of  the  4.7-inch  model. 

At  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  the  Wisconsin  Gun  Company 
put  up  for  the  Government  an  entirely  new  works  capable  of 
finishing  six  75-millimeter  guns  each  day.  The  plants  at  both 
Milwaukee  and  Madison  acquitted  themselves  well  and  gave 
us  guns  of  the  highest  quality. 

At  Chicago,  the  Illinois  Steel  Company  expanded  existing 
facilities  to  produce  more  of  the  necessary  electric-furnace 
steel,  which  was  forged  into  guns  at  several  works  producing 
gun  forgings,  both  for  the  Army  and  Navy. 

At  Indiana  Harbor,  Indiana,  the  works  of  the  Standard 
Forgings  Company,  whose  sole  business  had  been  the  volume 
production  of  forgings  with  steam  hammers  and  hydraulic 
presses,  were  expanded  to  the  enormous  extent  of  producing 
each  day  ten  sets  of  gun  forgings  for  the  155-millimeter 
howitzer  and  twenty-five  sets  a  day  for  the  75-millimeter  gun. 
This  was  a  triumph  of  organizing  ability,  and  this  factory  was 
one  of  our  main  reliances  for  these  guns. 

At  Gary,  Indiana,  the  American  Bridge  Company  created 
what  is  perhaps  the  finest  gun-forging  plant  in  the  world,  com- 
prising four  presses  from  1,000  tons'  to  3,000  tons'  forging 
capacity  and  all  the  other  necessary  apparatus  for  the  produc- 
tion each  day  of  two  sets  of  155-millimeter  G.  P.  F.  gun 
forgings  and  the  equivalent  of  one  and  one-half  sets  a  day  of 
240-millimeter  howitzer  forgings. 


54  THE  ARiMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

At  Baltimore,  Maryland,  the  plant  of  the  Hess  Steel  Cor- 
poration was  enlarged  from  its  peace-time  capacity  until  it 
could  produce  at  three  times  its  normal  rate  the  special  steels 
required  for  gun  manufacture. 

It  will  become  evident  that  the  collection  of  the  machinery, 
buildings,  and  equipment  necessary  to  produce  these  guns,  in 
the  short  space  of  time  required  and  at  the  rate  of  production 
stipulated,  was  an  enormous  task.  It  required  the  production 
of  vast  quantities  of  raw  materials  and  the  congregating  in  one 
place  of  large  numbers  of  men  capable  of  undertaking  the 
exceedingly  intricate  mechanical  processes  of  manufacture. 
The  success  of  this  plan  and  of  its  execution  is  due  largely 
to  the  loyalty  of  the  manufacturers  who  came  forward  early 
in  1917  and  agreed,  at  the  request  of  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, to  turn  over  their  plants,  lock,  stock,  and  barrel,  to  the 
requirements  of  the  Department;  agreed  also  to  undertake 
the  manufacture  of  products  totally  unfamiliar  to  them; 
agreed  likewise  to  lend  all  their  organizing  ability  and  great 
material  resources  to  the  success  of  the  plants  which  the 
United  States  found  it  necessary  to  build  in  the  creation  of  a 
new  art,  in  new  locations,  and  to  an  extent  theretofore  un- 
dreamed of. 

Steel,  of  course,  and  steel  in  some  of  its  finest  forms,  is  the 
basis  of  gun  manufacture.  The  word  "steel,"  in  connection 
with  producing  guns,  means  much  more  than  is  ordinarily 
carried  by  the  word  in  its  everyday  and  commonly  accepted 
use.  Only  steel  of  the  highest  quality  is  suitable  for  gun 
manufacture,  as  we  indicated  previously  in  directing  atten- 
tion to  the  complete  reliance  which  the  operating  crews  must 
place  on  their  guns  and  to  the  severity  of  the  uses  to  which  the 
big  guns  are  put.  Let  us  take  a  hasty  trip  through  a  big  gun 
plant,  watching  the  processes  through  which  one  of  our  hardy 
and  efficient  big  guns  is  finally  evolved  from  the  raw  material. 

Entering  an  open-hearth  furnace  building  at  one  of  our  big 
gun  plants,  we  find  two  large  furnaces  in  which  the  raw  mate- 
rials are  charged.  Each  of  these  furnaces  is  75  feet  long  and 


GUN  PRODUCTION  55 

15  feet  wide.  In  each  of  them,  in  a  shallow  bath  or  pool,  lies 
the  molten  steel.  The  pool  is  about  33  feet  long  by  12  feet 
wide  and  approximately  2^  feet  deep.  This  pool,  or  "bath," 
as  it  is  termed,  weighs  approximately  sixty  tons.  It  is  composed 
of  pig  iron  and  well-selected  scrap  steel,  the  residue  from 
previous  operations. 

At  all  times  during  the  operation  of  melting  these  raw  mate- 
rials in  the  bath,  the  furnace  is  kept  at  such  a  high  tempera- 
ture that  the  eye  can  not  look  within  at  the  molten  mass  with- 
out being  protected  with  blue  glass  or  smoked  glass,  exactly 
as  when  looking  at  the  noonday  sun.  The  naked  eye  can  see 
nothing  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  bath  in  which  the  steel  is 
being  melted  and  refined,  because  the  temperature  is  so 
exceedingly  high  that  it  gives  a  light  as  white  as  that  of  the 
sun. 

After  twelve  or  fifteen  hours  of  refining  treatment  in  this 
furnace,  the  metal  is  tested,  analyzed  in  the  chemical  labora- 
torv%  and,  if  found  to  be  refined  to  the  proper  degree,  is  allowed 
to  flow  out  of  the  furnace  on  the  opposite  side  from  that 
through  which  it  entered.  Flowing  out  of  the  furnace,  the 
entire  charge  of  sixty  tons  finds  its  way  into  a  huge  ladle  which 
is  suspended  from  a  traveling  crane  capable  of  safely  carrying 
so  great  a  weight. 

The  ladle  is  then  transferred  by  the  crane  to  a  heavy  cast- 
iron  mold,  built  so  as  to  contain  as  much  of  the  sixty  tons  of 
molten  metal  as  is  required  for  the  particular  gun  forging 
under  manufacture.  The  mold  which  we  have  before  us  now  on 
our  imaginary  trip  through  the  gun  plant  will  provide  from 
the  molten  metal  an  "ingot"  40  inches  in  diameter  and  100 
inches  high.  On  top  of  this  ingot  will  be  a  so-called  "sink- 
head,"  lined  with  brick.  This  sinkhead  is  that  portion  of  the 
molten  metal  which  has  been  allowed  to  cool  more  slowly  in 
the  brick  lining  than  the  ingot  does  in  the  cast-iron  mold 
proper.  The  ingot,  with  the  sinkhead,  will  weigh  approxi- 
mately 60,000  pounds.  The  sinkhead  is  cast  in  order  to  ensure 
greater  solidity  to  the  portion  of  the  ingot  which  is  used  for 
the  gun  forging.  Only  that  part  of  the  ingot  below  the  sink- 


56  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

head  enters  the  forging.  The  sinkhead  itself  is  cut  off,  while 
hot,  under  the  press  in  a  subsequent  operation,  and  afterwards 
remelted. 

Next,  the  ingot  is  placed  under  a  2,ooo-ton  forging  press,  a 
machine  which  can  take  ingots  up  to  45  inches  in  diameter. 
There,  after  coming  from  the  mold  in  an  octagonal  form,  it  is 
forged  into  a  square  shape.  Previously  to  its  being  put  under 
this  press,  however,  a  careful  chemical  analysis  has  been  made 
of  the  ingot  to  ascertain  whether  it  be  satisfactory  for  gun  pur- 
poses; and  also  before  being  put  under  the  press,  the  whole 
ingot  is  heated  in  the  charge  chamber  with  either  a  gas  or  an 
oil  flame. 

After  the  ingot  forging  has  been,  by  further  operations  in  the 
press,  reduced  from  squareness  to  a  cylindrical  shape,  it  is 
allowed  to  cool ;  then  it  is  taken  to  the  machine  shop,  where  it 
is  turned  and  the  hole  through  which  the  projectile  ultimately 
will  pass  is  bored  into  it.  This  hole  is  somewhat  smaller  than 
the  diameter  of  the  projectile,  because  in  the  finishing  opera- 
tion, when  the  gun  is  assembled  finally  and  put  together,  the 
hole  must  be  within  one  one-thousandth  of  an  inch  of  the 
diameter  required,  which  is  all  the  tolerance  that  is  allowed 
from  the  accuracy  to  which  the  projectiles  are  brought.  Other- 
wise the  accuracy  of  the  gun  in  firing  would  be  injured  and  the 
reliability  of  its  aim  would  not  be  satisfactory. 

During  all  these  operations  with  the  ingot,  the  steel  is 
largely  in  the  soft  condition  in  which  it  left  the  forging  press. 
As  is  well  known,  steel  is  capable  of  taking  many  degrees  of 
"temper."  Temper  is  an  old  term,  no  longer  quite  descriptive  of 
the  condition  desired  or  obtained,  but  it  is  sufficiently  expres- 
sive of  the  condition  desired  to  serve  our  purposes  here.  This 
condition  is  one  of  a  certain  degree  of  hardness — greater  than 
that  of  ordinary  steel — combined  with  the  greatest  obtainable 
degree  of  toughness.  This  combination  of  hardness  and  tough- 
ness, produced  to  the  proper  degree,  resists  the  explosive  power 
of  the  powder  and  also  causes  the  wear  on  the  gun  in  firing  to 
be  diminished  and  made  as  slight  as  possible. 

To  effect  this  combination  of  hardness  and  toughness,  it  is 


Photo  from   Otis  Elevator  Company 

BORING  240-MILLIMETER  RECUPERATORS 


Photo  from  Morgan  Engineering   Company 

SHOP  IN  WAR  ORDNANCE  PLANT 


GUN  PRODUCTION  57 

necessary  to  take  the  bored  and  turned  tubes  of  the  guns  and 
suspend  them  by  means  of  a  specially  made  apparatus  in  a 
furnace  where  they  are  heated  for  a  period  of  perhaps  eight 
hours  to  a  temperature  of  approximately  1,500  degrees  F.,  or 
to  a  bright  yellow  color,  uniform  in  every  part  of  the  piece. 

After  being  subjected  to  this  treatment  for  the  time  men- 
tioned, the  tube  is  then  conducted  by  means  of  a  traveling 
crane  apparatus  to  a  tank  of  warm  water  into  which  it  is 
dipped  and  the  heat  rapidly  taken  from  it  down  to  a  point  prac- 
tically of  atmospheric  temperature.  This  "quench,"  as  it  is 
called,  produces  the  degree  of  hardness  called  for  by  the  ord- 
nance officers'  design;  but  the  piece  has  not  yet  reached  the 
required  degree  of  toughness.  This  toughness  is  now  imparted 
to  the  hard  piece  by  heating  it  once  more  in  another  furnace  to 
a  temperature  of  approximately  1,100  degrees  F,,  or  to  a  warm 
rosy  red,  for  a  period  of  perhaps  fourteen  hours.  From  this 
temperature  the  piece  is  allowed  to  cool  naturally  and  slowly 
to  the  atmospheric  temperature. 

The  ordnance  inspectors  at  this  point  determine  whether 
the  piece  has  the  required  properties  in  a  sufficient  degree,  by 
cutting  from  the  tube  a  piece  five  inches  long  and  half  an  inch 
in  diameter.  The  ends  of  this  piece  are  threaded  suitably  for 
gripping  in  a  machine.  The  piece  is  then  pulled  until  the  half- 
inch  stem  breaks.  The  machine  registers  the  amount  of  force 
required  to  break  this  piece,  and  this  gives  the  ordnance  engi- 
neer his  test  as  to  the  degree  of  hardness  and  toughness  to  which 
the  piece  has  been  brought  by  the  heat-treatment  processes  just 
described. 

A  satisfactory  physical  condition  having  been  determined 
by  pulling  and  breaking  the  test  pieces  as  described,  the  whole 
forging  is  sent  to  the  finishing  shop,  where  it  is  machined  to 
a  mirror  polish  on  all  its  surfaces.  The  diameters  are  accu- 
rately measured  and  the  forgings  assembled  into  the  shape  of  a 
finished  gun. 

In  this  process  there  is  required  a  different  kind  of  care  and 
accuracy.  Until  this  time  the  care  has  been  to  provide  a  metal 
of  proper  consistency  and  quality.  From  this  point  forward 


58  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  manufacture  of  a  gun  requires  the  machining  and  fitting 
of  this  metal  into  a  shape  and  form  so  accurate  that  the  full 
strength  of  the  gun  and  the  best  accuracy  of  fire  can  be 
realized. 

First,  a  few  lines  to  explain  how  and  why  hoops  are  placed 
upon  the  gun  tubing,  and  how  the  various  hoops  are  shrunk 
from  the  outside  diameter  of  the  gun.  Cannon  are  made  of  con- 
centric cylinders  shrunk  one  upon  another.  The  objects  of  this 
method  of  construction  are  two.  The  distinctly  practical  object 
is  the  attainment  throughout  the  wall  of  each  cylinder  of  the 
soundness  and  uniformity  of  metal  which  are  more  certainly 
to  be  had  in  thin  pieces  than  in  thick  ones;  the  other  object  is 
more  closely  connected  with  the  theory  of  gun  construction. 

When  a  hollow  cylinder  is  subjected  to  an  interior  pres- 
sure, the  walls  of  the  cylinder  are  not  uniformly  strained 
throughout  their  thickness,  but  the  layer  at  the  bore  is  much 
more  severely  strained  than  that  at  the  outside.  This  law  can 
readily  be  tested  if  we  consider  a  cylinder  of  rubber  with,  for 
example,  a  bore  of  one  inch  and  an  exterior  diameter  of  three 
inches — about  the  proportions  of  many  guns.  If  we  put  an 
interior  air  pressure  in  the  cylinder  until  we  expand  the  bore 
to  two  inches,  the  exterior  diameter  will  not  thereby  be  in- 
creased one  inch.  But  supposing  that  it  were  increased  as  much 
as  the  bore, — that  is,  one  inch, — we  should  have  the  diameter, 
and  therefore  the  circumference,  of  the  bore  increased  loo 
per  cent,  and  the  circumference  of  the  exterior  increased  33 Vs 
per  cent.  That  is,  the  layer  at  the  bore  would  be  strained  three 
times  as  much  as  that  at  the  exterior,  and  the  interior  layer 
would  begin  to  tear  before  that  at  the  exterior  would  reach 
anything  like  its  limit  of  strength.  The  whole  wall  of  the 
cylinder  would  therefore  not  be  contributing  its  full  strength 
toward  resisting  the  interior  pressure,  and  there  would  be  a 
waste  of  material  as  well  as  a  loss  of  strength. 

Let  us  now  consider,  instead  of  our  simple  cylinder,  a  built- 
up  cylinder  composed  of  two  concentric  ones,  the  inner  one  of 
a  bore  originally  a  little  greater  than  one  inch,  and  the  outer 
one  of  exterior  diameter  a  little  less  than  three  inches,  origi- 


GUN  PRODUCTION  59 

nally;  so  that,  when  the  outer  one  is  pressed  over  the  inner 
one  (its  inner  diameter  being  originally  too  small  for  it  to  go 
over  the  inner  one  without  stretching),  the  bore  of  the  inner 
one  is  brought  to  one  inch,  and  the  exterior  of  the  outer  one  to 
three  inches.  We  now  have  a  cylinder  of  the  same  dimensions 
as  our  simple  one,  but  in  a  different  state,  the  layers  of  the 
inner  one  being  compressed  and  those  of  the  outer  one 
extended. 

If  now  we  begin  to  put  air  pressure  on  the  bore,  we  can  put 
on  a  certain  amount  before  we  wipe  out  the  compression  of  the 
inner  layer  and  bring  it  to  a  neutral  state;  and  thereafter  we 
can  go  on  putting  on  more  pressure  until  we  stretch  the  inner 
layer  100  per  cent  beyond  the  neutral  state,  as  before;  which 
would  take  just  as  much  additional  pressure  as  the  total  pres- 
sure which  we  employed  with  our  simple  cylinder.  We  have 
therefore  gained  all  that  pressure  which  is  necessary  to  bring 
the  inner  layer  of  our  built-up  cylinder  from  its  state  of  com- 
pression to  the  neutral  state.  If  we  have  so  proportioned  the 
diameter  of  junction  of  our  inner  and  outer  cylinders  and  so 
gauged  the  amount  of  stretching  required  to  get  the  outer  one 
over  the  inner  one  that  we  have  not  in  the  process  caused  any 
of  the  layers  of  the  outer  one  to  be  overstrained,  the  gain  has 
been  a  real  one,  attained  by  causing  the  layers  of  the  outer 
cylinder  to  make  a  better  contribution  of  strength  toward 
resisting  the  interior  pressure.  This  is  the  theory  of  the  built- 
up  gun. 

The  number  of  cylinders  employed  generally  increases,  up 
to  a  certain  limit,  with  the  size  of  the  gun,  practical  considera- 
tions governing;  and  the  "shrinkage,"  or  amount  by  which 
the  inner  diameter  of  the  outer  cylinder  is  less  than  the  outer 
diameter  of  the  one  which  it  is  to  be  shrunk  over,  is  a  matter 
of  nice  calculation.  Roughly  speaking,  it  is  about  one  and  one- 
half  one-thousandths  of  an  inch  for  each  inch  of  diameter, 
varying  with  the  position  of  the  cylinder  in  the  gun;  and  the 
accurate  attainment  of  such  precise  dimensions  throughout  the 
length  of  the  cylinder  of  a  large  gun,  is  a  delicate  matter  of  the 
gunmaker's  art  and  the  machinist's  skill. 


6o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  method  of  assembly  is  to  have  the  cold  tube  set  upright 
and  prepared  for  a  circulation  of  water  within  the  bore  of  the 
tube  to  keep  it  cool.  Then  the  hoop,  whose  inside  diameter  is 
smaller  than  the  outside  diameter  of  the  tube  on  which  it  is 
to  be  shrunk,  is  measured  and  carefully  heated  to  a  temperature 
of  approximately  450  degrees  F.,  or  just  about  the  tempera- 
ture of  a  good  oven  for  baking  or  roasting.  This  mild  tempera- 
ture so  expands  the  material  in  the  hoop  that  the  difference 
of  diameter  is  overcome  and  the  hot  hoop  is  expanded  to  a 
larger  inside  diameter  than  the  outside  of  the  cold  tube  on 
which  the  hoop  is  to  be  placed.  Next,  the  hot  expanded  hoop 
is  placed  in  position  around  the  breech  end  of  the  tube,  and 
slowly  and  carefully  cooled,  so  that  in  contracting  from  the 
high  temperature  to  the  low  ordinary  temperature,  the  hoop 
shrinks  toward  its  original  diameter  and  thus  exerts  an  enclos- 
ing pressure  or  compressive  strain  upon  the  breech  end  of  the 
tube.  Now,  when  the  gun  is  fired  the  tube  tends  to  expand 
under  the  pressure,  and  this  expansion  is  resisted,  first  by  the 
compressive  force  exerted  by  the  shrunken  hoop  and  later  by 
the  hoop  itself;  so  that  the  built-up  construction  is  stronger 
and  better  able  to  resist  the  explosive  charge  of  the  burning 
powder  than  if  the  gun  were  made  in  one  piece  and  were  of 
the  same  thickness  of  metal. 

This  brief  explanation  will  show  why  so  many  pieces  are 
provided  for  the  manufacture  of  the  finished  gun  and  why  so 
large  a  number  of  machine  tools  and  machining  operations  is 
necessary  in  order  to  carry  forward  the  manufacture  of  the 
finished  article.* 

Both  our  4.7-inch  gun,  Model  1906,  with  which  our  troops 
have  been  equipped  for  a  long  time  and  which  throws  a  pro- 
jectile weighing  forty-five  pounds  a  distance  of  about  six  miles, 
and  the  French  75-millimeter  (2.95-inch)  gun,  successfully 
used  by  the  French  since  1897,  were  designed  to  be  drawn  by 
horses ;  and  the  guns  are  best  used  when  drawn  by  teams  of  six 
or  eight  horses.  As  the  horse  has  a  sustained  pulling  power  of 

*  Sometimes  one  of  the  outer  cylinders  is  replaced  by  layers  of  wire,  wound 
under  tension  ;  sometimes  more  than  one  are  so  replaced. 


GUN  PRODUCTION  61 

only  650  pounds,  it  is  obvious  that  the  weight  to  be  drawn  by 
the  team  of  six  horses  must  not  be  more  than  3,900  pounds. 
There  is,  therefore,  every  incentive  for  making  mobile  artil- 
lery of  this  kind  as  light  as  possible,  consistently  with  the 
strength  required  for  the  work  to  be  done.  Thus  the  pulling 
power  of  the  horse,  coupled  with  his  speed,  has  been  the  limit- 
ing factor  in  the  design  and  weight  of  mobile  field  artillery. 
As  one  of  our  foremost  United  States  ordnance  engineers  once 
said:  "The  limited  power  of  the  horse  is  what  has  governed  the 
weight  of  our  artillery.  ...  If  Divine  Providence  had  given 
the  horse  the  speed  of  the  deer  and  the  power  of  the  elephant, 
we  might  have  had  a  far  wider  and  more  effective  range  for 
our  mobile  artillery." 

One  of  the  answers  of  the  United  States  ordnance  engineers 
to  this  problem,  as  developed  in  the  recent  war,  has  been  the 
production  of  a  tractor  to  replace  the  horse;  a  tractor  which  has 
the  speed  of  the  deer  and  the  power  of  the  elephant.  The  most 
powerful  tractors  are  mounted  on  track-laying  devices  and  are 
colloquially  known  as  caterpillars.  One  of  these  powerful 
caterpillars  on  which  is  mounted  an  8-inch  howitzer,  with  a 
range  of  six  miles, — the  tractor  is  manned  and  operated  by 
only  two  men,  and  it  can  go  uphill  and  downhill,  over  broken 
brushwood,  trees,  and  the  like, — was  given  a  severe  test  at 
the  Aberdeen  Proving  Ground.  It  was  sent  through  a  dense 
wood  in  which  it  bumped  squarely  into  a  live  locust  tree 
seventeen  inches  in  diameter  at  the  base.  This  tree,  almost  the 
tallest  in  the  wood,  was  prostrated  by  the  attack  of  the  tractor, 
which  rode  over  it  and  then  emerged  from  the  wood,  took  up 
its  position,  and  fired  its  shot  in  almost  as  short  a  time  as  it 
takes  to  tell  of  the  feat.  Truly  the  power  of  the  elephant  and 
the  speed  of  the  deer  have  been  brought  to  the  aid  of  the  ord- 
nance engineer  for  any  future  warlike  operations. 

The  number  of  workmen  employed  in  gun  production  at 
once  in  this  country  totaled  21,000,  and  fully  as  many  more 
are  estimated  to  have  been  employed  in  the  manufacture  of 
gun  carriages  and  fire-control  instruments.  These  men  became 


62  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

so  skilled  in  their  work  that  the  difficult  art  of  gunmaking 
has  become  firmly  established  in  this  country.  The  United 
States  may  now  and  at  any  time  in  the  near  future  rely  on  this 
trained  body  of  artisans  for  the  finest  kind  of  gun-metal 
manufacture. 


CHAPTER  IV 
MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY 

THE  chance  observer  might  assume  that,  once  the  Ord- 
nance Department  had  succeeded  in  putting  in  pro- 
duction the  cannon  of  various  sizes  de'scribed  in  the 
preceding  chapter,  the  battle  of  providing  artillery  was  as 
good  as  won.  But  no:  even  after  the  ponderous  tubes  had 
come  finished  from  the  elaborate  processes  of  the  steel  mills, 
the  task  of  the  ordnance  officers  had  only  begun.  Each  gun 
had  to  be  rendered  mobile  in  the  field  and  it  had  to  be  equipped 
with  a  mechanism  to  take  up  the  retrograde  shock  of  firing  (the 
"kick")  and  to  prevent  the  weapon  from  leaping  out  of  aim 
at  each  discharge.  Mobility  is  given  to  a  gun  by  the  carriage 
on  which  it  rides.  The  device  which  absorbs  the  recoil  and 
restores  the  gun  to  position  is  called  the  recuperator  (in  the 
hydropneumatic  French  design),  or  the  recoil  mechanism.  Car- 
riage and  recuperator,  or  recoil  mechanism,  are  together  known 
as  the  mount. 

The  forging,  boring,  reinforcing,  machining,  and  finishing 
of  the  gun  body  are  not  half  the  battle  of  manufacturing  a 
modem  military  weapon ;  they  are  scarcely  one-third  of  it.  No 
ordnance  officer  of  1917-1918  will  ever  forget  the  heart- 
breaking experiences  of  manufacturing  the  mounts,  a  work 
which  went  along  simultaneously  with  the  production  of  the 
cannon  themselves.  The  manufacture  of  carriages  often  pre- 
sented engineering  and  production  problems  of  the  most 
baffling  sort.  As  to  the  recuperators,  a  short  analysis  of  the  part 
they  play  in  the  operation  of  a  giin  will  indicate  something  of 
the  scope  of  the  project  to  build  them  in  quantities. 

The  old  schoolbook  axiom  that  action  and  reaction  are 
equal  and  opposite  has  a  peculiar  emphasis  when  applied  to  the 


64  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

firing  of  a  modern  piece  of  high-power  artillery.  The  force 
exerted  to  throw  a  heavy  projectile  seven  miles  or  more  from 
the  muzzle  of  a  gun  is  exerted  equally  toward  the  breech  of  the 
weapon  in  its  recoil.  Some  of  these  forces,  handled  so  safely 
and  easily  by  mechanical  means,  are  almost  beyond  the  riiind's 
grasp. 

Not  long  ago  a  touring  car  weighing  two  tons  traveled  at 
the  rate  of  120  miles  an  hour  along  a  Florida  beach.  Conceive 
of  such  a  car  going  337  miles  an  hour,  which  is  much  faster 
than  any  man  ever  traveled;  then  conceive  of  a  mechanism 
which  would  stop  this  car,  going  nearly  six  miles  a  minute — 
stop  it  in  forty-five  inches  of  space  and  half  a  second  of  time, 
without  the  slightest  injury  to  the  automobile.  That  is  pre- 
cisely the  equivalent  of  the  feat  performed  by  the  recuperator 
of  a  240-millimeter  howitzer  after  a  shot.  Or,  conceive  of  a 
150,000-pound  locomotive  traveling  at  53.3  miles  an  hour. 
The  action  of  the  240-millimeter  recuperator  after  a  shot  is 
equivalent  to  stopping  that  locomotive  in  less  than  four  feet 
in  half  a  second  without  damage. 

The  forging  for  the  155-millimeter  howitzer's  recuperator 
is  a  block  of  steel  weighing  nearly  two  tons — in  exact  figures, 
3,875  pounds.  This  must  be  bored  and  machined  out  until  it 
weighs,  with  the  accessory  parts  of  the  complete  recuperator 
placed  on  the  scales  with  it,  only  870  pounds.  It  is  scarcely 
fair  to  a  modern  hydropneumatic  recuperator  to  say  that  it 
must  be  finished  with  the  precision  of  a  watch.  It  must  be 
finished  with  a  mechanical  nicety  comparable  only  to  the  finish 
of  such  a  delicate  instrument  as  a  navigator's  sextant  or  the 
mechanism  which  adjusts  the  Lick  telescope  to  the  movement 
of  the  earth.  No  heavy  articles  ever  before  turned  out  in 
American  workshops  required  in  their  finish  the  degree  of 
microscopic  perfection  which  the  recuperators  exacted. 

We  adopted  from  the  French,  the  greatest  of  all  artillery 
builders,  four  recuperators — one  for  the  75-millimeter  gun, 
one  for  the  1 55-millimeter  gun,  another  for  the  1 55-millimeter 
howitzer,  and  the  fourth  for  the  240-millimeter  howitzer. 
These  mechanisms  had  never  been  built  before  outside  France. 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  6_^ 

Indeed,  one  could  find  pessimists  ready  to  say  that  none  but 
French  mechanics  could  build  them  at  all,  and  that  our 
attempt  to  duplicate  them  could  end  only  in  failure.  Yet 
American  mechanical  genius  "licked"  every  one  of  these  prob- 
lems, as  the  men  in  the  greasy  overalls  say,  and  did  it  in  little 
more  than  a  year  after  the  plans  came  to  the  workshops.  There 
was  not  one  of  these  beautiful  mechanisms,  in  France  the 
product  of  patient  handiwork  on  the  part  of  metal  craftsmen 
of  deep  and  inherited  skill,  that  did  not  eventually  become  in 
American  workshops  a  practical  proposition  of  quantity  pro- 
duction. 

The  problem  of  building  French  recuperators  in  the  United 
States  may  be  regarded  as  the  crux  of  the  whole  American 
ordnance  undertaking  in  the  war  against  Germany,  the  index 
of  its  success.  It  presented  the  most  formidable  challenge  of  all 
to  American  industrial  skill.  Men  whose  opinion  had  to  be  con- 
sidered were  convinced  that  it  was  impracticable  to  attempt  tO' 
produce  French  recuperators  here.  Although  the  superiority  of 
these  recoil  devices  in  their  respective  classes  was  universally 
conceded,  Germany  had  never  been  able  to  make  them,  and 
England,  with  the  cooperation  of  the  French  ordnance  engi- 
neers freely  offered,  did  not  attempt  them.  The  French  built 
them  one  by  one,  as  certain  custom-built  and  highly  expensive 
automobiles  are  produced.  When  American  factories  proposed, 
not  only  to  produce  French  recuperators,  but  to  manufacture 
them  by  making  parts  and  assembling  them  according  to  the 
modem  practice  of  quantity  production,  the  ranks  of  the  skep- 
tics increased.  Yet,  as  we  have  said,  the  thing  was  done.  The 
first  of  the  recuperators  ever  produced  outside  the  French 
industry  were  produced  in  America  and  manufactured  by 
typically  American  quantity  methods. 

The  first  of  these  recuperators  to  come  into  quantity  produc- 
tion was  that  for  the  155-millimeter  howitzer.  Rough  forg- 
ings  began  to  be  turned  out  in  heavy  quantities  by  the  Mesta 
Machine  Company  in  the  spring  of  1918;  the  Watertown 
Arsenal,  the  other  contractor,  reached  quantity  production  in 
rough  forgings  in  August,  1918.  At  their  special  recuperator 


66  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

plant  at  Detroit  the  Dodge  Brothers  turned  out  the  first  fin- 
ished 155-millimeter  howitzer  recuperator  in  July,  1918,  and 
went  into  quantity  production  in  September,  producing  495 
in  the  month  of  November  alone,  and  turning  out  in  all  the 
great  number  of  1,601. 

Next  in  order  of  time  to  be  conquered  as  a  factory  prob- 
lem was  the  155-millimeter  gun  recuperator.  The  rough  forg- 
ings  at  the  Carnegie  Steel  Company,  the  sole  contractor,  were 
in  quantity  production  in  the  spring  of  1918.  The  first  of  these 
recuperators  to  be  finished  came  from  the  Dodge  plant  in 
October,  1918;  and  although  thirty  issued  from  the  plant  and 
were  accepted  before  the  end  of  the  year,  quantity  production 
may  be  said  to  have  started  on  January  1,  1919,  when  the 
factory  began  producing  them  at  the  rate  of  more  than  four  a 
day.  In  March  the  high  mark  of  361  recuperators  was  reached. 
The  total  production  was  881. 

The  heavy  240-millimeter  howitzer  recuperator  was  third 
to  come  into  quantity  production.  The  rough  forgings  were 
being  turned  out  in  quantity  in  the  spring  of  1918  by  the 
Carnegie  Steel  Company;  and  the  Watertown  Arsenal,  the 
other  contractor,  produced  a  number  in  October,  1918.  The 
two  contractors  for  finishing  and  turning  out  the  complete 
recuperators  were  the  Otis  Elevator  Company,  at  its  Chicago 
plant,  and  the  Watertown  Arsenal.  The  arsenal  produced  the 
pilot  recuperator  in  October,  1918.  In  January  the  Otis  Ele- 
vator Company  produced  its  first  four;  and  quantity  produc- 
tion began  in  February,  1919,  both  contractors  that  month 
sending  out  sixteen  recuperators,  a  number  which  may  be 
regarded  as  good  quantity  when  the  size  of  this  mechanism  is 
taken  into  consideration. 

Last  to  come  through  to  quantity  production  was  the  hard- 
est of  the  four  to  build,  the  one  that  had  threatened  to  defy 
American  industry  to  build  it  at  all — the  75-millimeter  gun 
recuperator.  The  two  principal  contractors  for  the  rough  forg- 
ings for  this  recuperator  were  the  Carbon  Steel  Company  and 
the  Bucyrus  Company.  The  Carbon  Steel  Company  was  in 
large  series  production  in  the  spring  of  1918,  and  the  Bucyrus 


Photo  from  Dodge  Brothers 

IN  THE  155-MILLIMETER  RECUPERATOR  PLANT 


Photo  from   Otis  Elevatat    Ci  i/H',i/n 

MAKING  240-MILLIMETER  RECUPERATORS 


Photo  from  Ordnance  Department 

FRENCH  75  MADE  IN  U.  S.  A. 


Photo  from  Ordnance  Department 

AMERICAN-BUILT  155-MILLIMETER  GUN 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  67 

Company  reached  the  quantity  basis  of  manufacture  in  Sep- 
tember, 1918.  In  that  month  alone  the  contractors  turned  out 
748  sets  of  forgings. 

The  machining  and  finishing  of  the  75-millimeter  recupera- 
tor were  in  the  hands  of  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal  and  the  Singer 
Manufacturing  Company,  which  built  a  costly  plant  especially 
for  the  purpose  at  Elizabethport,  New  Jersey.  The  first  recu- 
perator of  this  size  to  appear  and  be  accepted  under  the  severe 
tests  came  from  the  arsenal  in  November.  Thereafter  the  pro- 
duction ceased  for  a  while.  The  contractors  indeed  built  recu- 
perators in  this  period,  but  the  recuperators  could  not  pass  the 
tests.  The  machining  and  production  of  parts  seemed  to  be  as 
perfect  as  human  skill  could  accomplish,  but  still  the  devices 
would  not  function  perfectly.  Adjustments,  seemingly  of  the 
most  microscopical  and  trivial  sort,  had  to  be  made — there 
was  trouble  with  the  leather  of  the  valves  and  with  oil  for  the 
cylinders.  These  matters,  which  could  scarcely  cause  any  de- 
lay at  all  in  the  production  of  less  delicate  machinery,  indi- 
cate the  infinite  care  which  had  to  be  employed  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  recuperators.  At  length  the  producers  smoothed 
out  the  obstacles  and  learned  all  the  secrets  and  necessary 
processes,  and  then  the  75-millimeter  recuperators  began  to 
come — two  in  January,  1919,  and  then  thirteen  in  February, 
twenty  in  March,  and  twenty  in  April.  In  July,  1919,  the  two 
contractors  turned  out  232  recuperators. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  by  quantity  production  in 
this  particular  is  meant  the  production  in  quantity  of  recupera- 
tors of  such  perfect  quality  as  to  pass  the  inspection  of  the 
Government  and  to  be  accepted  as  part  of  our  national  ord- 
nance equipment.  In  its  inspection  the  Government  was 
assisted  by  French  engineers  sent  from  the  great  artillery 
factories  in  France  which  had  designed  the  recuperators  and 
which,  until  the  successful  outcome  of  the  American  attempt, 
were  their  sole  producers.  Such  inspection  naturally  required 
that  the  American  recuperators  be  the  equals  of  their  French 
prototypes  in  every  respect. 

Because  the  production  of  French  recuperators  stands  at 


68  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  summit  of  American  ordnance  achievement,  here  at  this 
point,  before  there  is  given  any  account  of  the  manufacture 
of  field  artillery,  the  theme  of  this  chapter,  we  insert  a  per- 
formance table  to  show  the  records  written  by  the  various  con- 
cerns engaged  in  making  these  devices. 

In  discussing  here  the  production  of  held  artillery  in  the 
war  period,  we  are  concerned  chiefly  with  carriages  and  recu- 
perators, for  they  offered  the  major  difficulties.  Since  the  pro- 
duction of  gun  bodies  for  these  various  units  has  been  taken  up 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  such  reference  to  them  as  is  neces- 
sary will  be  brief.  For  the  sake  of  additional  clearness  in  the 
mind  of  the  reader  inexpert  in  these  things,  the  line  should  be 
sharply  drawn  between  field  artillery  and  the  so-called  rail- 
way artillery,  which  was  also  mobile  to  a  limited  degree.  The 
mobile  field  artillery  consisted  of  all  rolling  guns  or  caterpillar 
guns  up  to  and  including  the  240-millimeter  howitzer  in  size; 
it  also  included  the  anti-aircraft  guns  of  various  sizes.  All 
mobile  guns  of  larger  caliber  than  the  240-millimeter  howitzer 
were  mounted  on  railroad  cars. 

The  list  of  the  mobile  field-artillery  weapons  in  manufacture 
here  during  the  war  period  was  as  follows :    . 

The  little  37-millimeter  gun,  the  so-called  infantry  cannon, 
which  two  husky  men  could  lift  from  the  ground — a  French 
design; 

The  75-millimeter  guns — three  types  of  them — the  French 
75,  adopted  bodily  by  the  United  States;  our  own  3-inch  gun, 
redesigned  to  the  French  caliber;  and  the  British  3.3-inch  gun, 
similarly  redesigned; 

The  4.7-inch  gun  of  American  design; 

The  5-inch  and  6-inch  guns,  taken  from  our  coast  defenses 
and  naval  stores  and  placed  on  mobile  mounts; 

The  155-millimeter  gun,  a  French  weapon  with  a  barrel 
diameter  of  approximately  6  inches; 

The  155-millimeter  howitzer,  also  French; 

The  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers,  British  designs,  being 
manufactured  in  the  United  States  when  war  was  declared; 


"^otal  to 

Total  to 

V. II,  /pi8 

Dec.  31,  J919 

2,566 

3.835 

456 

751 

42 

42 

3,064 

4,628 

0 

247 

I 

552 

1 

799 

4,062 

4.255 

282 

346 

4.344 

4,601 

743 

1,601 

1.418 

1.734 

1 

881 

663 

710 

21 

21 

684 

731 

277 

1 

148 

I 

425 

:zer  recuperators,  all 

1.  howitzer 

recupera- 

Acceptances  of  Recuperators  by  Fin 


I  Army  Ordnance  Orders  Only 


.   Sept.    Oct.    Nov.  Dec.    Jan.    Feb.    Mar,  Apr.    May   June    July   . 


in  Recuperator  (1897) 
I  Suel  Company    .     . 


ig  and  Assembling 


262      252      463      746 


Mesu  Machine  Companj 
Walertown  Arsenal    .     . 

Total 

Complete  Machining  and  Ass 
Dodge  Brothers  .      .     .     . 
155-mm.  Gun  Recuperator 
Forging 
Carnegie  Steel  Company 


676      475      919      897    1,287 


113      229      3ii 


;  Sleel  Com 


Wat 


Total  . 

Finish  Machining  and  / 
Otis  Elevator  Compa 
Wateriown  Arsenal 

Total 


1,  the  firms  which  d 


s  done  by  one  firm ;  for  the  others,  rough  machin 


hinings,  finish  machin 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY 


69 


The  240-millimeter  howitzer,  French  and  American;  and, 
finally. 

The  anti-aircraft  guns. 

In  modern  times,  but  prior  to  1917,  the  United  States  had 
designed  types  of  iield-artiller\^  weapons  and  produced  them 
in  quantities  shown  by  the  following  tabulation: 


2.95-inch  mountain  gun 
3-inch  gun 
4.7-inch  gun 
5-inch  gun 
6-inch  howitzer 
7-inch  howitzer 

Total  . 


Pieces 

113 

544 

60 

70 
40 
70 

897 


A  comparison  of  this  list  with  the  enumeration  above  of 
weapons  put  in  production  during  the  war  against  Germany 
indicates  that  we  greatly  expanded  our  artillery  in  types. 
That  we  were  able  to  do  this  at  the  outset  and  go  ahead  imme- 
diately with  the  production  of  many  weapons  strange  and 
unknown  to  our  experience,  without  waiting  to  develop  models 
and  types  of  our  own,  is  due  solely  to  the  generosity  of  the 
governments  of  France  and  Great  Britain,  with  whom  we 
became  associated.  We  manufactured,  in  all,  eight  new  weap- 
ons, taking  the  designs  of  three  of  them  from  the  British  and 
of  five  from  the  French. 

It  might  seem  to  the  uninitiated  that  the  way  of  the  United 
States  to  the  great  output  of  artillery  would  be  made  smooth 
by  the  action  of  the  British  and  French  governments  in  agree- 
ing to  turn  over  to  us  without  reservation  the  blue  prints  and 
specifications  which  were  the  product  of  years  of  develop- 
ment in  their  gun  plants.  Yet  this  was  only  relatively  true. 
In  numerous  instances  we  were  not  able  to  secure  complete 
drawings  until  months  after  we  had  entered  the  war.  The 
practice  of  continental  manufacturers  entrusts  numerous  exact 
measurements  to  the  memories  of  the  mechanics  in  their  shops ; 


70  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

and  it  required  several  months  to  complete  the  drawings. 
Even  when  we  received  them,  our  troubles  had  only  begun. 

First,  there  came  the  problem  of  translating  the  plans  after 
we  received  them.  All  French  dimensions  are  according  to  the 
metric  system.  A  millimeter  is  one  one-thousandth  part  of  a 
meter,  and  a  meter  is  39.37  inches.  An  inch  is  approximately 
.0254  meters.  Thus,  to  translate  French  plans  into  American 
factory  practice  involves  hundreds  of  mathematical  computa- 
tions, most  of  them  carried  out  to  decimals  of  four  or  five 
places.  Moreover,  the  French  shop  drawings  are  put  down  on 
an  angle  of  projection  different  from  that  used  in  this  country. 
This  fact  involved  the  recasting  of  drawings,  even  when  the 
metric  system  measurements  were  retained.  When  it  is  con- 
sidered that  such  a  mechanism  as  the  recuperator  on  the  155- 
millimeter  gun  involves  the  translation  of  416  drawings,  the 
fact  that  the  preparation  of  French  plans  for  our  own  use 
never  took  more  than  two  months  is  remarkable;  particularly 
so  because  it  was  hard  to  find  in  the  United  States  draftsmen 
and  engineers  familiar  with  such  translation  work. 

Once  our  specifications  were  worked  out  from  the  French 
plans,  it  became  necessary  to  find  American  manufacturers 
willing  to  bid  on  the  contracts.  The  average  manufacturer 
would  look  at  these  specifications,  realize  what  a  highly  spe- 
cialized and  involved  sort  of  work  would  be  required  in  the 
production  of  the  gun  carriages  or  recoil  mechanisms,  and 
shake  his  head.  In  numerous  instances  no  such  work  had  ever 
before  been  attempted  in  the  United  States.  But,  as  the  result 
of  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  Government,  an  increased  capacity 
for  producing  mobile  field  artillery  was  created  as  follows : 

At  Watertown,  New  York,  the  New  York  Air  Brake  Com- 
pany, as  agent  for  the  United  States,  constructed  a  completely 
new  factory  to  turn  out  twenty-five  carriages  a  month  for  the 
75-millimeter  guns.  Model  1916 — the  American  3-inch  type 
modified  to  the  French  dimensions. 

At  Toledo,  Ohio,  increased  facilities  were  put  up  at  the 
plant  of  the  Willys-Overland  Company  to  manufacture   a 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  71 

daily  output  of  seventeen  French  75-millimeter  gun  carriages, 
model  1897. 

At  Elizabethport,  New  Jersey,  the  Singer  Manufacturing 
Company  erected  for  the  Government  a  complete  new  factory 
for  finishing  daily  seventeen  French  75-millimeter  recu- 
perators. 

At  New  Britain,  Connecticut,  the  plant  of  the  New  Britain 
Machine  Company  was  adapted  and  increased  facilities  were 
created  for  the  manufacture  of  two  3-inch  anti-aircraft  gun 
carriages  a  day. 

At  Detroit,  Michigan,  the  Dodge  Brothers,  as  agents  for  the 
Government,  erected  an  entirely  new  factory,  costing  in  the 
neighborhood  of  $11,000,000,  to  give  the  final  machining  to 
the  rough-machine  forgings  for  five  recuperators  daily  for 
the  155-millimeter  gun  and  to  machine  completely  the  parts 
for  twelve  recuperators  daily  for  the  155-millimeter  howitzer. 
Their  huge  new  plant  for  this  purpose  established  a  record  for 
rapidity  of  construction  in  one  of  the  most  severe  winters  of 
recent  history. 

At  the  plant  of  the  Studebaker  Corporation  at  Detroit, 
facilities  were  extended  for  turning  out  three  carriages  a  day 
for  the  4.7-inch  guns. 

At  Plainfield,  New  Jersey,  extended  facilities  were  created 
at  the  factory  of  the  Walter  Scott  Company  for  manufacturing 
twenty  carriages  a  month  for  the  4.7-inch  guns. 

At  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  at  the  plant  of  the  Osgood 
Bradley  Car  Company  increased  facilities  were  built  for  the 
daily  manufacture  of  five  carriages  for  the  155-millimeter 
howitzers. 

At  Hamilton,  Ohio,  at  the  works  of  the  American  Rolling 
Mill  Company,  extensions  were  made  to  provide  for  the  manu- 
facture each  day  of  three  carriages  for  the  155-millimeter 
howitzers. 

The  plant  of  the  Mesta  Machine  Company,  at  West  Home- 
stead, Pennsylvania,  near  Pittsburg,  was  extended  to  the 
enormous  capacity  for  turning  out  the  forgings  for  forty  recu- 
perators a  day  for  155-millimeter  howitzers. 


72  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Extensively  increased  facilities  were  made  at  the  shops  of 
the  Standard  Steel  Car  Company,  at  Hammond,  Indiana,  for 
the  daily  output  of  two  carriages  for  the  240-millimeter 
howitzers. 

Increased  facilities  were  created  in  the  plant  of  the  Otis 
Elevator  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois,  for  the  finish  machining 
of  the  equivalent  in  parts  of  two  and  one-half  recuperators  a 
day  for  240-millimeter  howitzers. 

Large  extensions  were  made  to  the  plant  of  the  Morgan 
Engineering  Company,  Alliance,  Ohio,  for  the  manufacture 
monthly  of  twenty  improvised  mounts  for  the  6-inch  guns 
taken  from  the  seacoast  fortifications. 

The  facilities  of  the  United  States  arsenals  at  Watertown, 
Massachusetts,  and  at  Rock  Island,  Illinois,  for  the  manu- 
facture of  field-gun  carriages  and  recuperators  were  greatly 
increased. 

This  carriage  construction  for  the  big  guns  required  the 
closest  kind  of  fine  machine  work  and  fittings  where  the  brake 
or  recuperator  construction  entered  the  problem,  and  the  great 
plants  built  for  this  purpose  of  turning  out  carriages  and 
recuperators  were  marvels  for  the  rapidity  of  their  construc- 
tion, the  speed  with  which  they  were  equipped  with  new  and 
intricate  tools,  and  the  quality  of  their  output. 

Every  mobile  gun  mount  must  be  equipped  with  a  shield 
of  armor  plate.  The  size  of  the  artillery  project  may  be  read 
in  the  fact  that  our  initial  requirement  for  armor  for  the  guns 
ran  to  a  total  of  1 5,000  tons,  to  be  produced  as  soon  as  it  could 
be  done.  Now,  we  had  no  real  source  for  getting  armor  in  such 
large  quantities,  because  the  previous  demands  of  our  artillery 
construction  had  never  called  for  it.  The  prewar  manufac- 
turers of  artillery  armor  were  three  in  number — the  Simmons 
Manufacturing  Company,  of  St.  Louis;  Henry  Disston  & 
Sons,  of  Philadelphia;  and  the  Crucible  Steel  Company.  To 
meet  the  new  demand  two  armor  sources  were  developed — 
the  Mosler  Safe  Company  plant  of  the  Standard  Ordnance 
Company  and  the  Universal  Rolling  Mill  Company.  The 
process  of  building  this  armor  had  been  a  closely  guarded 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  73 

secret  in  the  past — a  fact  which  necessitated  extended  experi- 
ments in  the  new  plants  before  satisfactory  material  could  be 
obtained. 

The  new  artillery  program  required  the  manufacture  of 
120,000  wheels  of  various  types  and  sizes  for  the  mobile  car- 
riages. The  Rock  Island  Arsenal  and  two  commercial  concerns 
had  been  building  artillery  wheels  in  limited  quantities  before 
the  war.  One  completely  new  plant  had  to  be  erected  for  the 
manufacture  of  wheels,  and  seven  existing  factories  were  spe- 
cially equipped  for  this  work.  We  had  to  develop  new  sources 
of  supply  of  oak  and  hickory  and  to  erect  dry  kilns  specially 
for  the  wheel  project. 

The  largest  single  order  for  rubber  tires  in  the  history  of  the 
American  rubber  industry  was  placed,  as  one  relatively  small 
phase  of  the  artillery  program,  the  order  amounting  to  $4,250,- 
000.  Rubber  tires  on  the  wheels  of  all  the  heavier  types  of  artil- 
lery carriages,  so  that  the  units  might  be  drawn  at  good  speed 
by  motor  vehicles,  was  essentially  an  American  innovation.  No 
tires  of  this  size  had  ever  been  manufactured  in  this  country, 
and  it  was  necessary  for  the  firms  who  got  the  orders  to  build 
machinery  specially  designed  for  the  purpose. 

With  practically  all  the  manufacturers  of  the  American 
metal-working  industries  clamoring  for  machine  tools,  and 
with  some  branches  of  the  Government  commandeering  the 
machine-tool  shops  in  whole  sections  of  the  country,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  necessity  for  the  heavier  types  of  machine  tools 
required  by  the  manufacturers  of  artillery  material  offered  a 
weighty  problem  at  the  outset.  In  fact,  the  machine-tool  sup- 
ply was  never  adequate  at  any  time,  and  the  shortage  of  this 
machinery  hampered  and  considerably  impeded  the  speed  of 
our  artillery  production. 

The  nation  was  raked  with  a  fine-toothed  comb  for  shop 
equipment.  The  Government  went  to  almost  any  honorable 
length  to  procure  the  indispensable  tooling.  For  instance,  when 
the  Dodge  plant  at  Detroit  was  being  equipped  to  manufac- 
ture the  155-millimeter  recuperators  the  government  agents 
discovered  several  trainloads  of  machinery  consigned  to  the 


74  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Russian  Government  and  awaiting  shipment.  These  tools  were 
commandeered  on  the  docks.  One  huge  metal  planer  had 
dropped  overboard  while  it  was  being  lightered  to  the  ocean 
tramp  steamer  that  was  to  carry  it  to  a  Russian  port.  Govern- 
ment divers  fixed  grappling  hooks  to  this  machine,  and  it 
was  brought  to  the  surface  and  shipped  at  once  to  the  Dodge 
plant. 

The  3-inch  gun  which  we  had  been  building  for  many  years 
prior  to  the  war  was  a  serviceable  and  efficient  weapon;  but 
still  we  were  unable  to  put  it  into  production  immediately  as 
it  was.  Our  earliest  divisions  in  France,  under  the  international 
arrangement,  were  to  be  equipped  by  the  French  with  75- 
millimeter  guns;  while  we  on  this  side  of  the  water,  reaching 
out  for  all  designs  of  guns  of  proved  worth,  expected  to  manu- 
facture the  75's  in  large  numbers  in  this  country.  The  French 

75  is  a  fraction  of  an  inch  smaller  in  its  barrel  diameter  than 
our  3-inch  gun,  the  exact  equivalent  of  75  millimeters  being 
2.95275  inches.  Thus,  if  we  built  our  own  3-inch  gun  (and 
the  British  3.3-inch  gun,  as  we  intended)  and  also  went  ahead 
with  the  75-millimeter  project  on  a  great  scale,  we  should  be 
confronted  by  the  necessity  of  providing  three  sorts  of  ammu- 
nition of  almost  the  same  size,  with  all  the  delays  and  confu- 
sion which  such  a  situation  would  imply.  Consequently  we 
decided  to  redesign  the  American  and  British  guns  to  make 
their  bores  uniformly  75  millimeters,  thus  simplifying  the 
ammunition  problem  and  making  available  to  us  in  case  of 
shortage  the  supplies  of  shell  of  this  size  in  France. 

With  all  the  above  considerations  in  mind,  it  is  evident 
now,  and  it  was  then,  that  we  could  not  hope  to  equip  our 
Army  with  American-built  artillery  as  rapidly  as  that  Army 
could  be  collected,  trained,  and  sent  to  France;  and  this  was 
particularly  true  when,  in  the  spring  of  1917,  the  army  policy 
was  changed  to  give  each  1,000,000  men  almost  twice  as  many 
field  guns  as  our  program  had  required  before  that  date.  When, 
on  June  27,  1917,  the  Secretary  of  War  directed  the  Chief  of 
Ordnance  to  provide  the  necessary  artillery  for  the  2,000,000 
men  who  were  to  be  mobilized  in  1917  and  the  first  half  of 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  75 

1918,  the  first  thought  of  our  officers  was  to  find  outside  sup- 
plies of  artillery  which  we  could  obtain  for  an  emergency  that 
would  not  be  relieved  until  our  new  facilities  had  reached  great 
production. 

We  found  this  source  in  France.  The  French  had  long  been 
the  leading  people  in  Europe  in  the  production  of  artillery, 
and  even  the  great  demands  of  the  war  had  not  succeeded  in 
utilizing  the  full  capacity  of  their  old  and  new  plants.  Two 
days  later,  on  June  29,  1917,  the  French  high  commissioner, 
by  letter,  offered  us  in  behalf  of  France  a  daily  supply  of  five 
75-millimeter  guns  and  carriages,  beginning  August  1,  1917. 
The  French  also  offered  at  this  time  to  furnish  us  with  155- 
millimeter  howitzers;  and  on  August  19,  1917,  the  French 
Government  informed  General  Pershing  that  each  month,  be- 
ginning with  September,  he  could  obtain  twelve  155-milli- 
meter Filloux  guns  and  carriages  from  the  French  factories. 

Before  the  signing  of  the  armistice  75-millimeter  guns  to 
the  number  of  3,068  had  been  ordered  from  the  French,  and 
of  this  number  1,828  had  been  delivered.  Of  155-millimeter 
howitzers,  1,361  had  been  ordered  from  the  French  and  772 
delivered  before  November  11,  1918.  Of  155-millimeter  guns, 
577  had  been  ordered  and  216  delivered. 

From  British  plants  we  ordered  212  Vickers-type  8-inch 
howitzers  and  123  had  been  delivered  before  the  armistice  had 
been  signed;  while  of  9.2-inch  howitzers,  Vickers  model,  40 
of  an  order  for  132  had  been  completed.  In  addition  to  these, 
302  British  6-inch  howitzers  were  in  manufacture  in  England 
for  delivery  to  us  by  April  1,  1919.  These  figures,  with  the 
exception  of  those  relating  to  the  order  for  British  6-inch 
howitzers,  do  not  include  the  arrangements  being  made  by 
our  Government  during  the  last  few  weeks  of  hostilities  for 
additional  deliveries  of  foreign  artillery. 

As  to  our  own  manufacture  of  artillery,  when  we  had  con- 
quered all  the  difficulties — translated  the  drawings,  built  the 
new  factories,  equipped  them  with  machine  tools  and  dies, 
gauges,  and  other  fixtures  needed  by  the  metal  workers,  and 
had   mobilized   the   skilled   workers   themselves — we   forged 


76  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ahead  at  an  impressive  rate.  When  the  armistice  was  signed 
we  were  turning  out  412  artillery  units  a  month.  Compare  this 
with  Great  Britain's  486  units  a  month  in  the  fall  of  1918 
and  measure  our  progress,  remembering  that  England  had 
approximately  three  years'  head  start.  Compare  it  with  the 
French  monthly  production  of  659  units  per  month,  and  re- 
member that  France  was  the  greatest  artillery  builder  in  the 
world.  When  it  came  to  the  gun  bodies  themselves,  we  obtained 
a  monthly  output  of  832,  as  against  Great  Britain's  802  and 
France's  1,138.  And  our  artillery  capacity  was  then,  in  the 
autumn  of  1918,  only  coming  into  production! 

In  the  war  period — April  6,  1917,  to  November  1 1,  1918 — 
we  produced  2,008  complete  artillery  units,  as  against  11,056 
turned  out  by  France  and  8,065  by  Great  Britain  in  the  same 
period.  In  those  nineteen  months  we  turned  out  4,275  gun 
bodies.  In  the  same  months  France  produced  19,492  and  Great 
Britain  1 1,852.  (See  Figure  13,  page  40.) 


37-MILLIMETER  INFANTRY  FIELD  GUNS 

The  smallest  weapon  of  all  the  field  guns  we  built  was  the 
French  37-millimeter  gun.  The  diameter  of  its  bore  is  about 
one  and  one-half  inches  in  our  measurement;  the  exact  figure  is 
1.45669  inches.  This  was  the  so-called  infantry  field  gun,  to  be 
dragged  along  by  foot  soldiers  making  an  advance.  Its  chief 
use  in  the  war  was  in  breaking  up  the  German  concrete  pill 
boxes,  machine  gun  nests,  and  other  strong  points  of  enemy 
resistance.  In  service  it  was  manned  by  infantrymen  instead 
of  artillerists,  a  crew  of  eight  men  handling  each  weapon,  the 
squad  leader  being  the  gunner.  One  of  the  men  of  the  crew 
was  the  loader,  and  he  was  likewise  able  to  fire  the  piece.  The 
other  six  men  served  as  assistants. 

The  37-millimeter  outfit  consisted  of  the  gun,  with  a  split 
trail,  mounted  on  axle  and  wheels.  By  means  of  a  trailer 
attachment  on  the  ammunition  cart  it  could  be  drawn  by  one 
horse  or  one  mule.  The  ammunition  cart  itself  was  merely  a 
redesigned  machine  gun  ammunition  vehicle.  The  wheels  and 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  77 

axle  could  easily  be  removed  and  left  a  short  distance  in  the 
rear  of  the  place  where  it  was  desired  to  set  up  the  gun.  The 
whole  outfit  weighed  only  340  pounds  and  was  only  about  six 
feet  long. 

The  gun  rested  on  its  front  leg,  which  was  dropped  to  form  a 
tripod  with  the  two  legs  of  the  split  trail.  The  gun  proper  could 
be  removed  from  the  trail,  and  the  sponge  staff  could  be  in- 
serted in  the  barrel  through  the  opened  breech.  Two  men  could 
bear  this  part  of  the  weapon  in  advancing  action.  Two  other 
men  were  able  to  carry  the  trail,  when  its  legs  were  locked 
together,  while  four  other  members  of  the  squad  brought  along 
the  boxes  of  ammunition. 

The  ammunition  cart  held  fourteen  ammunition  boxes, 
each  containing  sixteen  rounds.  A  spare-parts  case,  strapped  to 
the  trail,  contained  a  miscellaneous  assortment  of  such  parts  as 
could  readily  be  handled  in  the  field.  A  tool  kit  in  a  canvas  roll 
was  also  transported  on  the  cart,  along  with  entrenching  tools 
and  other  accessories. 

Equipped  with  a  telescopic  sight  for  direct  fire  and  a  quad- 
rant, or  collimating,  sight  for  indirect  fire,  this  small  piece  of 
artillery  attained  great  accuracy.  The  length  of  the  barrel  of 
the  gun  proper  was  twenty  calibers,  which  means  that  it  was 
twenty  times  thirty-seven  millimeters  in  length,  or  about 
twenty-nine  inches.  The  length  of  the  recoil  when  the  gun  was 
fired  was  eight  inches. 

Two  types  of  ammunition  were  at  first  provided  for  this 
gun;  but  as  the  low-explosive  type  was  not  so  effective  as 
desired,  it  was  abandoned  entirely  in  favor  of  the  high-explo- 
sive type  contained  in  a  projectile  weighing  one  and  one-fourth 
pounds.  This  projectile  was  loaded  with  240  grains  of  T.  N.  T. 
and  detonated  by  a  base-percussion  fuse.  The  range  of  the 
gun  was  3,500  meters,  or  considerably  more  than  two  miles. 
Only  three  to  six  shots  from  it  were  found  to  be  necessary  to 
demolish  an  enemy  machine  gun  emplacement  or  other  strongly 
held  position. 

In  the  World  War  the  37-millimeter  gun  found  itself  and 
proved  its  usefulness.  The  original  model  had  been  designed 


78  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

at  the  Puteaux  Arsenal  in  France  in  1885;  but  it  was  not 
until  after  1914  that  the  weapon  was  produced  in  quantities. 

In  this  country  we  took  up  the  production  of  37-millimeter 
guns  in  October,  1917.  While  our  shops  were  tooling  up  for 
the  effort,  841  of  these  weapons  were  purchased  from  the 
French  and  turned  over  to  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces. 
For  greater  speed  in  manufacture,  our  executives  took  the  gun 
apart  and  divided  it  into  three  groups,  known  as  the  barrel 
group,  the  breech  group,  and  the  recoil  group.  Additional  to 
these,  as  a  manufacturing  proposition,  were  the  axle  and  wheels 
and  the  trail. 

The  barrel  group  went  to  the  Poole  Engineering  &  Machine 
Company,  of  Baltimore,  Maryland,  who  subcontracted  for 
some  of  the  parts  to  the  Maryland  Pressed  Steel  Company,  of 
Hagerstown,  Maryland.  The  breech  group  was  manufactured 
by  the  Krasberg  Manufacturing  Company,  of  Chicago.  The 
C.  H.  Cowdrey  Machine  Works,  of  Fitchburg,  Massachusetts, 
turned  out  the  recoil  mechanisms.  The  axles  and  wheels  were 
built  by  the  International  Harvester  Company,  of  Chicago. 
The  trails  were  turned  out  by  the  Universal  Stamping  &  Manu- 
facturing Company,  also  of  Chicago. 

When  crated  for  overseas  shipment,  the  gun,  ammunition 
cart,  and  all  accessories  weighed  1,550  pounds,  and  occupied 
about  fifteen  cubic  feet  of  space. 

The  first  delivery  of  completed  37-millimeter  guns  from 
our  factories  was  made  in  June,  1918,  and  at  the  cessation  of 
hostilities  manufacturers  were  turning  out  the  guns  at  the  rate 
of  ten  a  day.  Between  June  and  November  122  American- 
built  37-millimeter  guns  were  shipped  abroad,  and  more  were 
ready  to  be  sent  over  when  the  armistice  was  signed.  The  gun 
had  been  so  successful  in  use  abroad  that  our  original  order 
for  1,200  had  been  increased  to  4,025  before  the  signing  of  the 
armistice. 

The  various  groups  of  this  gun  were  shipped  to  the  plant 
of  the  Maryland  Pressed  Steel  Company,  Hagerstown,  Mary- 
land, for  assembly  and  were  there  tested  at  a  specially  built 
proving  ground,  eight  miles  from  the  factory. 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  79 

Three  37's  were  issued  to  each  infantry  regiment — one  for 
each  battalion.  The  required  equipment  for  a  division  was, 
therefore,  twelve  weapons. 


Production  of  jy-millimeter  Guns 


MODEL    1916  INFANTRY-ACCOMPANYING  GUN 

Guns  procured  from  French  Government  .....  841 

Total  number  ordered  manufactured  in  United  States         .          .  4,025 

Total  number  completed  at  signing  of  armistice          .          .          .  826 

Number  delivered  for  overseas  shipment  at  signing  of  armistice  300 

Number  canceled  on  United  States  orders          ....  2,825 

Total  number  completed  on  United  States  orders       .          .          .  1,200 

MODEL   1916  GUN  MODIFIED  FOR  TANKS  AND  MODEL 
1918  SEMI-AUTOMATIC  TANK  GUN 

Total  number  ordered  manufactured  in  United  States         .          .  2,438 

Total  number  completed  at  signing  of  armistice           ...  o 

Number  delivered  for  overseas  shipment  at  signing  of  ajmistice  o 

Number  canceled        .........  1,236 

Total  number  modified  for  tanks  completed.  Model  1916  .          .  1,200 

Total  number  semi-automatic,  Model  1918,  completed         .          .  2 


75-MILLIMETER  GUNS 

Next  in  order  in  the  upward  scale  of  sizes  we  come  to  the  75- 
millimeter  gun,  which  was  by  far  the  most  useful  and  most 
used  piece  of  artillery  in  the  World  War.  In  fact,  the  American 
artillery  program  might  be  divided  into  two  classes,  the  75's 
in  one  class,  and  all  other  sizes  in  the  other,  for  it  may  prac- 
tically be  said  that,  for  every  gun  of  another  size  produced,  we 
also  turned  out  a  75.  In  number  the  75's  made  up  almost  half 
our  field  artillery.  The  75-millimeter  gun  threw  projectiles 
weighing  between  twelve  and  sixteen  pounds,  and  it  had  an 
effective  range  of  over  five  and  one-half  miles. 

We  approached  the  war  production  of  this  weapon  with 
three  types  available  for  us  to  produce — our  own  3-inch  gun; 


8o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

its  British  cousin,  the  3.3-inch  gun,  or  18-pounder;  and  the 
French  75-millimeter  gun,  with  its  bore  of  2.95275  inches. 
The  decision  to  adopt  the  75-millimeter  size  and  modify  the 
other  two  guns  to  this  dimension,  giving  us  interchangeability 
of  ammunition  with  the  French,  was  an  historic  episode  in  the 
American  ordnance  development  of  1917. 

While,  in  1917,  the  French,  with  their  excess  manufactur- 
ing capacity,  were  working  on  our  first  orders  for  1,068  guns 
of  this  size,  to  supply  our  troops  during  the  interim  to  elapse 
until  American  factories  could  come  into  production,  we  were 
preparing  our  factories  for  the  effort.  Roughly  speaking,  the  75 
consists  of  a  cannon  mounted  on  a  two-wheeled  support  for 
transportation  purposes.  This  support  also  provides  a  means 
for  aiming  by  suitable  elevating  and  traverse  mechanisms.  As 
previously  explained,  a  recoil  mechanism  is  also  provided  to 
absorb  the  shock  of  firing,  allowing  a  certain  retrograde  move- 
ment of  the  cannon  and  then  returning  it  to  position  for  the 
next  shot — returning  it  "into  battery,"  as  the  artillerists  say. 
By  its  recuperator  device  the  field  gun  of  to-day  is  chiefly  dis- 
tinguished from  its  progenitor  of  the  latter  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  Without  a  recuperator  the  gun  would  leap  out 
of  aim  at  each  shot  and  would  have  to  be  pointed  anew;  but 
one  with  a  recuperator  needs  to  be  pointed  only  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  action. 

When  we  entered  the  war  we  found  ourselves  with  an  equip- 
ment of  544  field  guns  of  the  old  3-inch  model  of  1902.  This 
gun  had  a  carriage  with  the  old-style  single  trail.  By  1913, 
however,  we  had  been  experimenting  with  the  split  trail,  and 
it  had  been  strongly  recommended  by  our  ordnance  experts; 
and  in  1916  we  had  placed  orders  for  nearly  300  carriages  of 
the  split-trail  type,  which  had  come  to  be  known  as  Model 
1916.  Of  these  orders  ninety-six  carriages  were  to  come  from 
the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company,  and  the  remainder  from  the 
Rock  Island  Arsenal. 

Meanwhile,  for  some  time  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company 
had  been  engaged  in  turning  out  carriages  for  the  British  3.3- 
inch  guns.  Here  was  capacity  that  might  be  utilized  to  the 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  81 

limit;  and,  accordingly,  in  May,  1917,  we  ordered  from  the 
Bethlehem  Company  268  of  the  British  carriages.  At  the  same 
time  we  ordered  from  the  same  company  approximately  340 
of  our  own  Model  1916  carriages,  at  a  cost  of  $3,319,800.  A 
few  weeks  later  the  decision  had  been  made  to  make  all  our 
guns  of  this  sort  to  conform  to  the  French  75-millimeter  size, 
and  these  British  and  American  carriages,  contracted  for  in 
May,  were  ordered  modified  to  take  75-millimeter  guns.  The 
carriages  needed  little  modification  and  the  guns  not  much. 
Subsequently  we  placed  orders  in  rapid  succession  with  the 
Bethlehem  Steel  Company,  calling  for  the  construction  of  an 
additional  1,130  of  the  British  carriages,  all  of  them  to  be 
adapted  to  75-millimeter  guns. 

Next  it  was  the  concern  of  the  Ordnance  Department  to  find 
other  facilities  for  manufacturing  carriages  for  these  weapons. 
The  artillery  committee  of  the  Council  of  National  Defense 
located  the  New  York  Air  Brake  Company  as  a  concern  will- 
ing to  undertake  this  work;  and  in  June,  1917,  this  company 
signed  a  contract  to  produce  400  American  Model  1916  car- 
riages at  a  cost  of  $3,250,000. 

By  December  we  had  the  drawings  for  the  French  carriages 
of  this  size  and  made  a  contract  with  the  Willys-Overland 
Motor  Car  Company  to  produce  3,049  of  them. 

The  manufacture  of  carriages  for  the  75's  produced  con- 
crete results:  our  factories  here  were  turning  them  out  for  us 
at  the  rate  of  393  a  month  when  the  fighting  ceased,  and  our 
contract  plants  in  France  were  making  171a  month.  In  all,  we 
received  from  American  factories  1,221  carriages.  At  the  rate 
of  increase  we  should  have  been  building  800  carriages  a  month 
by  February,  1919. 

We  were  thoroughly  impressed  with  the  difficulties  attached 
to  transplanting  to  this  country  the  manufacture  of  French 
75-millimeter  recuperators.  It  was  a  question  whether  this 
device  could  possibly  be  built  by  any  except  the  French 
mechanics,  trained  by  long  years  in  its  production.  At  first  it 
seemed  that  we  could  secure  no  manufacturer  at  all  who  would 
be  willing  to  assume  such  a  burden.  Not  until  February,  1918, 


82  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

were  complete  drawings  and  specifications  of  the  recuperator 
received  from  France.  At  length  the  Singer  Manufacturing 
Company,  builders  of  sewing  machines,  consented  to  take  up 
this  new  work,  and  on  March  29  the  company  contracted  to 
produce  2,500  recoil  systems  for  the  75-millimeter  gun  car- 
riages. In  April,  1918,  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal  was  instructed 
to  turn  out  1,000  of  these  recuperators. 

The  production  of  gun  bodies  for  the  75-millimeter  units 
was  quite  satisfactory.  The  Bethlehem  Company,  the  Wiscon- 
sin Gun  Company,  the  Symington-Anderson  Company,  and  the 
Watervliet  Arsenal  were  the  contractors  who  built  the  gun 
bodies.  Gun  bodies  of  three  types,  but  all  of  the  same  75- 
millimeter  bore,  were  ordered — the  American  type  (the  modi- 
fied 3-inch  gun),  the  British  type  (the  modified  3,3-inch  gun), 
and  the  French  type. 

Our  ordnance  preparation  would  have  given  us  enough  75's 
for  the  projected  army  of  3,360,000  men  on  the  front  in  the 
summer  of  1919,  together  with  appropriate  provision  for  train- 
ing in  the  United  States.  Of  the  75's  built  in  this  country,  143 
units  were  shipped  to  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  be- 
fore the  armistice  went  into  effect.  Meanwhile  the  French  had 
delivered  to  our  troops  1,828  units  of  this  size.  The  total 
equipment  of  75's  for  our  Army  in  France  from  all  sources  thus 
amounted  to  1,971  guns  with  their  complete  accessories. 

4.7-INCH  GUNS 

In  the  4.7-inch  field  gun,  model  of  1906,  America  took  to 
France  a  weapon  all  her  own.  It  was  a  proved  gun,  too,  devel- 
oped under  searching  experiments  and  tests.  There  were  sixty 
of  these  in  actual  service  when  we  entered  the  war.  The  4.7- 
inch  guns,  with  their  greater  range  and  power,  promised  to  be 
particularly  useful  for  destroying  the  enemy's  77-millimeter 
guns. 

The  carriage  model  of  1906  for  the  4,7-inch  gun  is  of  the 
long  recoil  type,  the  recoil  being  seventy  inches.  The  recoil  is 
checked  by  a  hydraulic  cylinder,  and  a  system  of  springs  there- 
upon returns  the  gun  to  the  firing  position.  The  gun's  maximum 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

75-MILLIMETER  GUN  CARRIAGES  READY  FOR  WHEELS 


Photo  from   Jl'illys-Overland,  Inc. 

ASSEMBLING  75-MILLIMETER  GUN  CARRIAGES 


Photo  from   Osgood-Bradley   Car  Company 

ERECTING  TRAILS  FOR  155-MILLIMETER  HOWITZER 
CARRIAGES 


Photo  from   Osgood-Bradley  Car  Company 

MANUFACTURING  CARRIAGES  FOR  155-MILLIMETER 
HOWITZERS 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  83 

elevation  is  15  degrees,  at  which  elevation,  with  a  60-pound 
projectile,  the  gun  has  a  range  of  7,260  meters,  or  four  and 
one-half  miles.  With  a  45-pound  projectile  a  range  of  8,750 
meters,  or  nearly  five  and  one-half  miles,  can  be  obtained  at  15 
degrees'  elevation.  It  is  possible  to  increase  this  range  to  about 
10,000  meters,  or  well  over  six  miles,  by  depressing  the  trail 
into  a  hole  prepared  for  it,  a  practice  often  adopted  on  the 
field  to  obtain  greater  range.  The  total  weight  of  the  gun  car- 
riage with  its  limber  is  about  9,800  pounds. 

An  order  for  250  4.7-inch  carriages  was  placed  with  the 
Walter  Scott  Company,  at  Plainfield,  New  Jersey,  July  12, 

1917,  upon  the  recommendation  of  committees  of  the  Council 
of  National  Defense,  who  were  assisting  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment in  the  selection  of  industrial  firms  willing  to  accept 
artillery  contracts.  Of  the  250  ordered  from  this  concern  forty- 
nine  were  delivered  before  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 

The  Rock  Island  Arsenal  had  also  been  employed  previously 
in  turning  out  4.7-inch  carriages;  and  the  capacity  of  that 
plant,  although  small,  was  utilized.  Under  the  date  of  July 
23,  1917,  the  arsenal  was  instructed  to  deliver  183  carriages. 
Late  in  December,  1917,  the  Studebaker  Corporation  was  given 
an  order  for  500.  On  September  30,  1918,  Rock  Island  Arsenal 
was  given  an  additional  order  for  120  carriages,  and  the  Stude- 
baker order  was  reduced  to  380.  Additional  plant  facilities 
had  to  be  provided  by  both  the  Walter  Scott  Company  and  the 
Studebaker  Corporation. 

Up  to  November  11,  1918,  a  total  of  315  carriages  of  the 
4.7-inch  type  had  been  completed  and  delivered.  These  car- 
riages included  the  recoil  mechanism.  In  the  month  of  October, 

1918,  alone,  113  were  produced,  and  this  rate  would  have  been 
continued  had  the  armistice  not  been  signed. 

Cannon  for  the  4.7-inch  units  were  turned  out  at  the  Water- 
vliet  Arsenal  and  the  Northwestern  Ordnance  Company,  Madi- 
son, Wisconsin.  Deliveries  from  the  Watervliet  Arsenal  began 
in  June,  1918,  totaling  ninety-six  by  Armistice  Day;  and  the 
Northwestern  Ordnance  Company,  starting  its  deliveries  in 
August,  completed  fifty  by  the  date  of  the  armistice.  Up  to  the 


84  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

15th  of  November,  sixty-four  complete  4.7-inch  units  had 
been  floated  for  our  forces  overseas. 

Forgings  for  the  4.7-inch  gun  cannon  were  made  by  the 
Bethlehem  Steel  Company  and  the  Heppenstall  Forge  &  Knife 
Company,  of  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania.  Owing  to  the  great  dif- 
ference in  cross  section  between  muzzle  and  breech  end  of  the 
jacket,  great  difficulty  was  experienced  in  the  heat  treatment  of 
these  forgings,  particularly  on  the  part  of  manufacturers  who 
had  had  no  previous  experience  in  the  production  of  gun  forg- 
ings. In  order  to  produce  enough  forgings  to  supply  the  finish- 
machining  shops,  an  order  for  fifty  jackets  was  later  given  to 
the  Edgewater  Steel  Company  of  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania, 
where  the  jackets  were  forged.  These  were  then  sent  to  the 
Heppenstall  Forge  &  Knife  Company  for  rough  machining 
and  finally  returned  to  the  Edgewater  Steel  Company  for  heat 
treating.  An  order  for  150  jackets  was  also  given  to  the  Tacony 
Ordnance  Corporation.  Shortly  before  the  signing  of  the  armi- 
stice, the  jacket  was  redesigned  so  that  the  heavy  breech  end 
was  forged  separately  in  the  shape  of  a  breech  ring;  but  this 
design  was  not  produced. 

It  was  desired  to  develop  the  4.7-inch  gun  carriage  to  give  it 
the  characteristics  of  the  split-trail  75-millimeter  gun  car- 
riage, model  of  1916,  so  that  greater  elevation  and  wide 
traverse  could  be  obtained.  The  Bethlehem  Steel  Company 
was  given  a  small  order  for  thirty-six  carriages  of  their  own 
design  prior  to  the  war,  and  their  pilot  carriage  had  been 
undergoing  tests  at  the  proving  ground.  The  design  was, 
however,  not  sufficiently  advanced  to  be  used  in  the  war. 

5-INCH  AND  6-INCH  GUN  MOUNTS 

In  the  war  emergency  America  sought  to  put  on  the  front  every 
pound  of  artillery  she  could  acquire  from  any  source  whatso- 
ever. Accordingly,  before  any  of  the  manufacturing  projects 
were  even  started,  the  Ordnance  Department  conducted  a  pre- 
paredness inventory  of  the  United  States  to  see  what  guns 
already  in  existence  we  might  find  that  could  be  improvised 
for  use  as  mobile  artillery  in  France.  The  search  discovered  a 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  85 

number  of  heavy  cannon  that  could  serve  the  purpose — part 
of  them  belonging  to  the  Army,  these  being  the  guns  at  our 
seacoast  fortifications ;  part  belonging  to  the  Navy,  in  its  stores 
of  supplies  for  battleships;  and  part  of  them  being  the  prop- 
erty of  a  private  dealer,  Francis  Bannerman  &  Son,  of  New 
York. 

The  guns  for  this  improvised  use  were  obtained  as  follows: 
From  the  Coast  Artillery,  a  branch  of  the  Army,  we  obtained 
ninety-five  6-inch  guns,  50  calibers  in  length,  and  twenty- 
eight  5-inch  guns,  44.6  calibers;  from  the  navy  stores  came 
forty-six  6-inch  guns,  ranging  from  30  to  50  calibers  in  length ; 
from  Francis  Bannerman  &  Son,  thirty  6-inch  guns,  30  calibers 
long.  This  was  a  total  of  199  weapons  of  great  destructive 
power,  awaiting  only  suitable  mobile  mounts  to  make  them 
of  valiant  service  on  the  western  front.  It  was  the  task  of  the 
Ordnance  Department  to  take  these  guns  and,  as  swiftly  as 
possible,  mount  them  on  field-artillery  carriages  of  an  impro- 
vised type  that  could  most  quickly  be  built. 

Minor  changes  had  to  be  made  on  many  of  the  guns  ob- 
tained in  this  manner  in  order  to  adapt  them  to  use  on  field- 
artillery  carriages.  The  various  seacoast  guns  were  retained 
as  they  were  in  length,  because  it  was  planned  to  return  them 
eventually  to  the  fortifications  from  which  they  had  been 
taken.  The  navy  guns,  all  of  the  6-inch  size,  were  shipped  to 
the  Watervliet  Arsenal  to  be  cut  down  to  a  uniform  length 
of  thirty  calibers. 

The  need  for  speed  in  manufacture  demanded  that  the  car- 
riages for  these  guns  be  of  the  simplest  design  consistent  with 
the  ruggedness  required  for  field  operations  and  the  accuracy 
necessary  for  effectiveness.  When  tests  of  the  first  carriages 
produced  were  made  it  was  found  that  requirements  had  been 
more  than  met. 

Orders  were  placed  on  September  24,  1917,  with  the  Mor- 
gan Engineering  Company,  of  Alliance,  Ohio,  for  seventy 
mounts  for  the  6-inch  units.  A  few  days  later  this  number  was 
increased  to  seventy-four;  and  on  the  28th  of  September,  1917, 
the  same  company  was  given  an  order  for  eighteen  additional 


86  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

6-inch  gun  mounts  and  twenty-eight  mounts  for  the  5-inch 
guns.  Orders  for  limbers  were  placed  with  the  same  company 
on  December  1. 

It  was  soon  discovered  that  big  transport  wagons  would  be 
required  to  carry  the  long  6-inch  seacoast  guns  separately, 
because  of  their  great  weight.  On  February  15,  1918,  the 
Morgan  Engineering  Company  was  ordered  to  build  these 
necessary  transport  wagons. 

Difficulties  in  securing  skilled  labor,  necessary  materials, 
and  tools  delayed  production  of  these  mounts,  but  the  eighteen 
6-inch  gun  mounts  ordered  September  28,  1917,  were  com- 
pleted in  March,  1918,  and  the  twenty-eight  5-inch  gun  mounts 
ordered  on  the  same  date  were  finished  in  April.  In  August, 
1918,  the  seventy-four  6-inch  gun  mounts  were  turned  out. 
The  production  of  an  additional  order  for  thirty-seven  6-inch 
gun  mounts  was  just  beginning  when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

The  6-inch  gun  carriage,  bearing  the  gun,  weighs  about 
41,000  pounds.  A  maximum  range  of  over  ten  miles  can  be 
obtained  by  this  weapon.  The  complete  5-inch  gun  unit  weighs 
about  23,500  pounds  and  has  a  maximum  range  of  more  than 
nine  miles.  In  understanding  the  difficulties  that  faced  the 
Ordnance  Department  in  building  carriages  for  these  guns,  it 
should  be  recalled  that  these  big  weapons  were  originally  built 
for  fixed-emplacement  duty  and  were  therefore  much  heavier 
than  mobile  types.  This  fact  complicated  the  problem  of  de- 
signing the  wheeled  mounts.  The  guns  proved  to  be  more 
difficult  to  maneuver  than  the  lighter  types. 

155-MILLIMETER  HOWITZERS 

It  is  a  testimony  to  the  adaptability  and  skill  of  American 
industry  that  we  were  able  to  duplicate  successfully  in  this 
country  the  celebrated  155-millimeter  howitzer,  before  1917 
built  only  in  the  factory  of  its  original  designer,  the  great  firm 
of  Schneider  et  Cie.,  in  France.  This  powerful  weapon  is  a 
fine  example  of  the  French  gun  builders'  art,  in  a  country 
where  the  art  of  gunmaking  has  been  carried  to  a  perfection 
unknown  anywhere  else. 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  87 

The  history  of  the  155-millimeter  howitzer  dates  back  to 
the  nineteenth  century.  In  its  development  the  French  design- 
ers had  so  strengthened  its  structure,  increased  its  range,  and 
improved  its  general  serviceableness,  that  in  1914  it  was  ready 
to  take  its  place  as  one  of  the  two  most-used  and  best-known 
weapons  of  the  Allies,  the  other  being  the  75-millimeter  field 
gun.  As  thus  perfected,  the  howitzer  weighs  less  than  four 
tons  and  is  extremely  mobile  for  a  weapon  of  its  size.  It  can 
hurl  a  95-pound  projectile  well  over  seven  miles  and  fire 
several  times  a  minute.  The  rapidity  of  fire  is  made  possible 
by  a  hydropneumatic  recoil  system  that  supports  the  short 
barrel  of  the  gun  and  stores  up  the  energy  of  the  recoil  by  the 
compression  of  air.  With  the  gun  pointing  upward  at  an  angle 
of  45  degrees,  the  recoil  mechanism  will  restore  it  into  battery 
in  less  than  13  seconds.  The  carriage  of  the  gun  is  extremely 
light,  being  built  of  pressed  steel  parts  that  incorporate  many 
ingenious  features  of  design  to  reduce  the  weight.  The  shell  and 
the  propelling  charge  of  powder  are  loaded  separately. 

The  American-built  155-millimeter  howitzer  was  practically 
identical  with  that  built  in  France.  Any  of  the  important  parts 
of  the  American  weapon  would  interchange  with  those  which 
had  come  from  the  Schneider  factory.  We  equipped  the  wheels 
of  our  field  carriage,  however,  with  rubber  tires,  and  gave 
the  gun  a  straight  shield  of  armor  plate  instead  of  a  curved 
shield. 

In  the  spring  of  1917  we  bought  the  plans  of  the  howitzer 
from  Schneider  et  Cie.  and  began  at  once  the  work  of  trans- 
lating the  specifications  into  American  measurements.  This 
work  monopolized  the  efforts  of  an  expert  staff  until  October 
8,  1917. 

In  order  to  facilitate  the  reproduction  here,  we  divided  the 
weapon,  as  a  manufacturing  proposition,  into  three  groups — 
the  cannon  itself,  the  carriage,  and  the  recuperator  or  recoil 
system — and  placed  each  group  in  the  hands  of  separate  con- 
tractors. There  was,  of  course,  the  usual  difficulty  in  finding 
manufacturers  who  were  willing  to  undertake  production  of 
so  intricate  a  device  and  who  also  possessed  machine  shops 


88  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

with  the  equipment  and  talent  required  for  such  work,  and  in 
procuring  for  these  shops  the  highly  specialized  machinery 
that  would  be  necessary. 

The  American  Brake  Shoe  &  Foundry  Company,  of  Erie, 
Pennsylvania,  whose  magnificent  work  in  building  a  special 
plant  has  been  described  in  the  preceding  chapter,  took  an 
order  in  August,  1917,  for  3,000  howitzer  cannon  and  by 
October,  1918,  was  producing  twelve  of  them  every  day.  The 
company  turned  out  its  first  cannon  in  February,  1918,  ap- 
proximately six  months  after  receiving  the  contract,  having  in 
the  interim  built  and  equipped  a  most  elaborate  plant.  It  is 
doubtful  if  the  annals  of  industry  in  any  country  can  produce 
a  feat  to  match  this. 

In  fact,  the  production  of  cannon  by  the  Erie  concern  so  out- 
stripped the  manufacture  of  carriages  and  other  important 
parts  for  the  howitzer  that  it  was  possible  by  September,  1918, 
for  us  to  sell  550  howitzer  bodies  to  the  French  Government. 
When  the  armistice  was  signed  on  November  11,  1918,  the 
company  had  completed  1,172  cannon. 

In  November,  1917,  we  placed  orders  for  2,469  carriages 
for  this  weapon,  splitting  the  order  between  the  Osgood- 
Bradley  Car  Company,  of  Worcester,  Massachusetts,  and  the 
Mosler  Safe  Company,  of  Hamilton,  Ohio.  Then  followed  a 
long  battle  to  secure  the  tools  and  equipment,  the  skilled 
mechanical  labor,  and  the  necessary  quantities  of  the  best 
grades  of  steel  and  bronze,  an  effort  in  which  the  contracting 
companies  were  at  all  times  aided  by  the  engineers  of  the  Ord- 
nance Department,  All  obstacles  were  overcome  and  the  first 
carriages  were  ready  for  testing  in  June,  1918.  When  the 
armistice  was  signed,  154  carriages  had  been  delivered,  and 
production  was  moving  so  rapidly  that  one  month  later  this 
number  had  been  run  up  to  230. 

The  limbers  were  manufactured  by  the  Maxwell  Motor 
Car  Company,  which  had  orders  to  turn  out  2,575  of  them. 
The  first  deliveries  of  limbers  came  in  September,  1918,  and 
seven  a  day  were  being  turned  out  in  October,  a  total  of  273 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  89 

having  been  completed  by  the  day  of  the  armistice.  A  month 
later  the  number  of  completed  limbers  totaled  587. 

It  was  in  the  making  of  the  recuperator  systems  that  the 
greatest  problems  were  presented.  No  mechanism  at  all  similar 
to  this  had  ever  been  made  in  this  country.  No  plant  was  in 
existence  in  America  capable  of  turning  out  such  a  highly  com- 
plicated, precise,  and  delicate  device.  Finally,  after  much  gov- 
ernmental search  and  long  negotiation,  the  Dodge  Brothers,  of 
Detroit,  motor  car  builders,  agreed  to  accept  the  responsibility. 
In  this  effort  they  built  and  equipped  the  splendid  factory, 
costing  $10,000,000,  described  elsewhere. 

This  howitzer  recuperator  is  turned  out  from  a  solid  forg- 
ing weighing  3,875  pounds,  but  the  completed  recuperator 
weighs  only  870  pounds.  Each  cylinder  must  be  bored,  ground, 
and  lapped,  in  this  mechanical  sculpture,  to  a  degree  of  fine- 
ness and  accuracy  that  requires  the  most  painstaking  care. 

DifBculties  of  almost  every  sort  were  experienced  with  the 
forgings  and  other  elements  of  the  recuperators.  The  steel  was 
analyzed  and  its  metallurgical  formulas  were  changed.  The 
work  of  machining  proceeded  favorably  until  the  very  last 
operation — polishing  the  interior  of  the  long  bores  to  a  mirror- 
like glaze  and  still  retaining  the  extreme  accuracy  necessary  to 
prevent  the  leakage  of  oil  past  the  pistons.  Such  precision  had 
theretofore  been  unknown  in  American  heavy  manufacture. 
Until  the  many  processes  could  be  perfected,  the  deliveries 
were  held  back. 

Even  with  the  delivery  of  the  first  recuperator,  difficulties 
did  not  vanish.  This  mechanism  has  no  adjustments  which 
can  be  made  on  the  field,  but  depends  for  its  wonderful  opera- 
tion upon  the  extreme  nicety  of  the  relation  of  its  parts.  It 
required  the  alteration  of  certain  small  parts  before  the  first 
trial  models  could  be  made  to  function. 

But  all  obstacles  and  difficulties  were  finally  overcome,  and 
in  the  plant  that  had  been  erected  during  the  bitter  cold  of 
one  of  our  severest  winters,  and  with  almost  entirely  new 
machinery  and  workmen,  production  got  under  way,  and  the 
first  recuperator  was  delivered  early  in  July,  1918,  nine  months 


90  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

after  the  contract  had  been  signed.  Production  in  quantity 
began  to  follow  shortly  after  that  month,  and  by  November 
an  average  of  sixteen  recuperators  a  day  w^as  being  turned  out. 
Of  the  3,714  recuperators  contracted  for,  743  had  been  finished 
when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

The  steel  required  for  the  recuperators  in  these  155-milli- 
meter howitzers,  and  also  for  those  of  the  155-millimeter 
guns,  was  of  special  composition;  yet  all  the  forge  capacity 
in  this  country  was  being  utilized  in  other  war  manufacture. 
New  facilities  for  the  manufacture  of  these  forgings  had  to  be 
developed  by  increasing  the  capacity  of  the  Mesta  Machine 
Company  of  Pittsburg,  until  it  could  meet  our  requirements. 
The  Government  itself  contracted  for  these  forgings  and  sup- 
plied them  to  Dodge  Brothers. 

Each  howitzer  required  some  two  hundred  items  of  miscel- 
laneous equipment,  such  as  air  and  liquid  pumps  and  other 
tools.  These  were  purchased  from  many  sources,  and  many  of 
these  contractors  had  just  as  much  difficulty  with  the  small 
parts  as  the  larger  firms  had  with  the  more  important  sections 
of  the  howitzers. 

Many  of  the  problems  involved  in  turning  out  the  complete 
unit  could  not  be  known  or  understood  until  they  were  met 
with  in  actual  manufacture.  Mechanical  experts  representing 
Schneider  et  Cie.  were  on  hand  at  all  times  to  help  solve  diffi- 
culties as  they  arose. 

The  Government  turned  to  France  for  an  auxiliary  supply  of 
carriages  for  the  American-built  howitzers,  placing  orders  for 
1,361  with  French  concerns.  Of  this  number  772  had  been 
completed  when  the  armistice  was  signed,  and  the  French 
expected  soon  to  turn  out  the  carriages  at  the  rate  of  140  per 
month.  It  should  also  be  noted  here  that  we  placed  an  order 
in  England  for  302  British  6-inch  howitzers,  pieces  very  like 
the  French  howitzers.  The  British  contract  was  to  be  completed 
April  1,  1919. 

The  various  parts  of  the  155-millimeter  howitzer  were 
assembled  into  complete  units  and  tested  at  the  Aberdeen 
Proving  Ground,  After  being  assembled  and  tested,  the  whole 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  91 

unit  was  taken  apart  and  packed  into  crates  specially  designed 
for  overseas  shipment.  One  crate  held  two  howitzer  carriages 
with  recuperators  in  less  space  than  would  have  been  occupied 
by  one  carriage  on  its  wheels. 

It  will  be  noted  that  the  first  155-millimeter  howitzer  body 
made  in  the  country  was  delivered  in  February  and  the  first 
recuperator  in  July.  Before  the  recuperators  were  ready,  the 
other  parts  of  the  howitzer  had  been  proof-tried  by  using  a 
recuperator  of  French  manufacture. 

During  August  and  September,  1918,  the  first  regiment 
equipped  with  155-millimeter  howitzers  was  made  ready  at 
Aberdeen.  The  big  weapons  were  packed  and  on  the  dock  for 
shipment  overseas  when  the  armistice  was  signed.  These  first 
ones  were  to  be  followed  by  a  steady  stream  of  howitzers.  All 
arrangements  had  been  made  to  assemble  units  and  crate  them 
for  overseas  at  the  Erie  Proving  Ground  at  Port  Clinton, 
Ohio. 

None  of  the  155-millimeter  howitzers  built  here  reached  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces,  but  French  deliveries  of  the 
weapon  up  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice  totaled  747. 

155-MILLIMETER  G.  P.  F.  GUNS 

The  reproduction  in  the  United  States  of  the  French  155- 
millimeter  G.  P.  F.  (the  French  designation)  gun  presents 
much  the  same  story  as  that  of  the  howitzer  of  equal  size — a 
story  of  difficulties  in  translating  plans,  in  writing  into  them 
the  precision  of  finishing  measurements  that  the  French  factory 
usually  leaves  to  the  skill  of  the  mechanic  himself;  difficulties 
in  finding  manufacturers  willing  to  undertake  the  work;  diffi- 
culties in  providing  them  with  suitable  raw  materials  and 
machinery,  and,  above  all,  in  locating  the  necessary  skilled 
mechanics. 

This  strange  big  monster  of  a  weapon  is  of  rugged  design. 
The  entire  unit  weighs  19,860  pounds.  The  gun  has  the  ex- 
tremely high  muzzle  velocity  of  2,400  feet  per  second,  a  rate 
of  propulsion  that  throws  the  95-pound  projectile  17,700 
yards,  or  a  little  more  than  ten  miles. 


92  THE  ARxMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  wheels  of  the  carriage  have  a  double  tread  of  solid 
rubber  tire.  By  an  ingenious  arrangement  a  caterpillar  tread 
can  be  applied  to  the  wheels  in  a  few  minutes  whenever  soft 
ground  is  encountered. 

The  center  of  gravity  of  the  unit  is  low.  The  wheels  are  of 
small  dimensions  and  the  cradle  is  trunnioned  behind  in  such 
a  fashion  as  to  reduce  the  height  of  the  cannon.  The  carriage 
has  a  split  trail,  which  allows  for  a  large  clearance  for  recoil 
at  a  high  elevation  and  for  a  large  angle  of  traverse.  The  car- 
riage, when  traveling,  is  supported  on  semi-elliptical  springs, 
as  is  also  the  carriage  limber. 

Two  large  steel  castings  make  up  the  carriage  of  this  unit. 
The  bottom  part  of  the  carriage  is  supported  by  the  axle,  which 
carries  the  two  sections  of  the  split  trail  upon  the  hinge  pins. 
The  top  part  of  the  carriage  is  supported  by  and  revolves  upon 
the  bottom  carriage  and  carries,  in  trunnioned  bearings,  the 
recuperator.  The  principal  difficulty  in  carriage  manufacture 
was  to  obtain  in  this  country  the  extremely  large  steel  castings 
of  light-section,  high-grade  steel. 

The  carriages,  i  ,446  in  number,  were  ordered  in  November, 
1917,  from  the  Minneapolis  Steel  &  Machinery  Company.  The 
first  delivery  of  carriages  was  made  in  August,  1918,  and  in 
the  last  week  of  October  they  were  being  turned  out  at  the  rate 
of  seven  a  day.  Up  to  the  armistice  date  370  had  been  pro- 
duced, of  which  sixteen  had  been  sent  overseas.  We  also 
placed  orders  in  France  for  577  of  these  carriages,  of  which 
216  had  been  completed  upon  the  signing  of  the  armistice. 
The  American  monthly  rate  of  production  of  carriages  in 
October  was  162. 

The  155-millimeter  gun  itself  is  far  from  being  simple  to 
manufacture.  It  is  of  considerable  length  and  is  built  of  a 
number  of  jackets  and  hoops  to  give  the  required  resistance  to 
the  heavy  pressures  exerted  in  firing,  this  being  a  high-velocity 
gun.  Except  for  a  slight  change  in  the  manner  of  locking  the 
hoops  to  the  jacket,  our  gun  is  identical  with  that  of  the 
French. 

Orders   for  2,160  cannon   were  given   to   the  Watervliet 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  93 

Arsenal  and  the  Bui  lard  Engineering  Works,  at  Bridgeport, 
Connecticut,  in  November,  1917.  The  Bullard  Engineering 
Works  had  to  construct  new  buildings  and  to  purchase  and 
install  special  equipment  and  the  Watervliet  Arsenal  had  to 
extend  its  shops  and  also  purchase  and  install  much  additional 
machinery — a  job  that  took  time  at  both  places.  The  first 
deliveries  of  cannon  came  from  Watervliet  Arsenal  in  July, 
1918.  During  October  fifty-one  cannon  were  delivered,  and  it 
seemed  certain  that  by  early  in  1919  the  projected  eight  cannon 
a  day  would  be  the  rate  attained.  We  shipped  sixteen  of  the 
cannon  overseas.  By  November  1 1  we  had  received  seventy- 
one. 

Limbers  in  the  same  quantity  as  the  carriages  were  ordered 
from  the  Minneapolis  Steel  &  Machinery  Company,  which 
produced  a  limber  to  accompany  each  one  of  its  delivered 
carriages.  This  limber  has  an  extremely  heavy  axle,  similar 
to  the  automobile  front  axle.  Its  size  and  weight  caused  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  it  as  a  drop  forging. 

To  the  Dodge  Brothers  was  assigned  the  task  of  producing 
the  recuperators  for  this  gun  in  their  special  plant.  The  155- 
millimeter  gun  recuperators,  however,  were  made  secondary 
to  the  production  of  the  recuperators  for  the  155-millimeter 
howitzers,  which  were  the  easier  of  the  two  sorts  to  build. 

Forgings  were  available  and  work  started  on  recuperators 
in  April,  1918.  No  rapid  completion  of  these  intricate  mecha- 
nisms was  possible,  however,  as  the  first  forgings  encountered 
many  delays  in  their  machinings.  In  the  cycle  of  operations, 
with  everything  speeded  up  to  the  limit,  more  than  three 
months  must  elapse  from  the  day  the  recuperator  forging  is 
received  to  the  day  when  the  completed  mechanism  can  be 
turned  over  to  the  inspector  as  an  assembled  article.  It  was  in 
October,  1918,  that  the  first  155-millimeter  gun  recuperator 
was  delivered.  The  factory  expected  to  reach  a  maximum 
capacity  of  ten  a  day.  After  the  armistice  was  signed  the  com- 
pany's order  was  reduced  to  881,  which  had  all  been  completed 
by  May  1,  1919. 

In  order  to  have  recuperators  available  for  use  for  the  units 


94  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

shipped  from  the  United  States  minus  these  mechanisms,  no 
rough-machined  recuperator  forgings  were  shipped  to  France, 
where  the  work  of  machining  and  completing  was  done. 

The  translation  of  the  French  plans  for  this  weapon  fur- 
nished one  of  the  most  difficult  pieces  of  work  undertaken  by 
the  Ordnance  Department.  Without  counting  the  gun  pieces, 
the  carriage  and  limber  are  made  up  of  479  pieces,  and  the 
recoil  mechanism  has  372.  A  total  of  150  mechanical  tracings 
had  to  be  made  by  our  draftsmen  for  the  carriage  and  test 
tools;  50  for  the  carriage  limbers;  142  for  the  recoil  mechan- 
ism; 74  for  the  tools  and  accessories — a  total  of  416.  It  was 
extremely  difficult  to  secure  draftsmen  who  could  do  this  work, 
and  the  translation,  accomplished  in  a  few  weeks,  is  regarded 
as  a  remarkable  achievement. 

The  cannon  for  this  gun  were  tested  at  the  Erie  Proving 
Ground  and  there  packed  for  overseas  shipment.  We  had 
many  cannon  and  carriages  awaiting  shipment  when  the  armi- 
stice was  signed,  the  plan  being  to  send  them  to  France,  where 
they  would  be  equipped  with  recuperators. 

8-INCH  HOWITZERS 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war  the  British  designed  an  8-inch 
field  howitzer  that  proved  itself  on  battle  fields  in  France. 
Great  Britain  loaded  her  own  plants  with  orders  for  this 
weapon  and  then  turned  to  the  United  States  for  additional 
facilities.  The  Midvale  Steel  &  Ordnance  Company,  at  its 
plant  at  Nicetown,  Pennsylvania,  was  manufacturing  this  unit 
for  the  British  at  the  time  we  entered  the  war. 

On  April  14,  1917,  eight  days  after  we  had  formally  an- 
nounced our  purpose  of  warring  with  Germany,  an  order  for 
eighty  of  these  8-inch  howitzers  was  placed  with  the  Midvale 
Company.  It  was  understood  that  production  on  our  order  was 
to  be  begun  upon  the  completion  of  the  British  contract  on 
which  the  Midvale  Company  was  then  engaged.  The  order 
included  the  complete  units,  with  carriages,  limbers,  tools,  and 
accessories,  all  to  be  built  in  accordance  with  British  specifica- 
tions. 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  95 

Contracts  for  the  trails  were  sublet  by  the  Midvale  Company 
to  the  Cambria  Steel  Company;  for  the  wheels,  to  the  Ameri- 
can Road  Machinery  Company;  for  the  limbers  and  firing 
platforms,  to  the  J.  G.  Brill  Company;  and  for  the  open  sights, 
to  the  British-American  Manufacturing  Company.  Panoramic 
sights  for  these  guns  were  furnished  by  the  Frankford  Arsenal. 

So  satisfactorily  did  the  production  proceed  that  on  Decem- 
ber 13,  1917,  the  first  of  the  8-inch  howitzers  was  proof-tried 
with  good  results.  Early  in  January,  1918,  the  complete  units 
began  to  come  through  at  the  rate  of  three  a  week,  increasing 
to  four  in  April  and  to  six  in  May. 

A  subsequent  contract  with  Midvale  brought  the  total  num- 
ber of  howitzers  ordered  from  that  plant  up  to  195.  These 
weapons,  of  the  model  known  as  the  Mark  VI,  were  nearly  all 
produced  and  accepted  before  the  signing  of  the  armistice, 
ninety-six  of  them  being  shipped  overseas,  with  their  full 
complement  of  accessories.  Each  completed  unit  cost  in  the 
neighborhood  of  $55,000.  These  weapons  throw  a  200-pound 
projectile  11,750  yards. 

The  progress  of  the  war  moved  so  swiftly,  however,  that 
there  soon  arose  the  need  for  artillery  units  of  this  same  size, 
but  with  longer  range.  Accordingly  a  new  design,  known  as  the 
Mark  VIII^^S,  was  brought  out,  with  a  range  of  over  13,000 
yards.  On  October  2,  1918,  we  placed  with  the  Midvale  Com- 
pany an  order  for  100  of  these  8-inch  howitzers,  specifying 
carriages  of  the  new,  heavier  type. 

When  we  entered  the  war  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company, 
at  Bethlehem,  Pennsylvania,  was  producing  for  the  British 
Government  a  howitzer  with  a  bore  of  9.2  inches.  The  Beth- 
lehem Steel  Company  expected  to  complete  these  British  con- 
tracts in  July,  1917.  The  9.2-inch  howitzer  was  approximately 
the  same  size  as  the  240-millimeter  howitzer  which  we  were 
getting  ready  to  put  into  production.  However,  in  our  desire  to 
utilize  every  bit  of  the  production  facilities  of  the  country, 
we  ordered  100  of  the  9.2-inch  howitzer  units  from  the  Beth- 
lehem Steel  Company  and  placed  additional  orders  for  132  of 


96  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

these  units  in  England.  The  British  concerns  delivered  forty 
howitzers  before  the  armistice  was  signed. 

240-MILLIMETER  HOWITZERS 

The  scheme  of  production  of  the  French  240-millimeter 
howitzers  was  entirely  aimed  at  the  year  1919;  for  even  if 
American  heavy  manufacturing  establishments  had  not  been 
loaded  with  war  orders,  it  would  have  been  well-nigh  impos- 
sible to  turn  out  this  mighty  engine  of  destruction  in  quantities 
in  any  shorter  period  of  time. 

Although  approximately  the  same  size  as  the  British  9.2- 
inch  howitzer  (the  exact  diameter  of  the  bore  of  the  240  being 
9.45  inches)  and  only  a  little  larger  than  the  8-inch  howitzer, 
the  French  gun  was  far  more  powerful  than  either.  The  8-inch 
and  the  9.2-inch  howitzers  had  ranges  in  the  neighborhood  of 
six  miles,  their  shell  weighing  from  200  to  290  pounds.  The 
240  hurled  a  shell  weighing  356  pounds  and  carrying  a  burst- 
ing charge  of  between  forty-iive  and  fifty  pounds  of  high 
explosive.  Its  range  was  almost  ten  miles. 

We  produced  the  8-inch  and  the  9.2-inch  howitzers  to  fill 
the  gap  during  the  two  years  which  must  elapse  before  we  could 
get  into  quantity  production  with  the  240's.  The  French  and 
British  governments,  in  the  fall  of  1917,  asserted  their  ability 
to  equip  our  first  thirty  combat  divisions  in  1918  with  heavy 
howitzers,  so  that  if  our  production  came  along  in  the  spring 
of  1919  it  would  meet  the  requirements  of  the  war  situation. 
Consequently  we  planned  to  equip  our  first  army  of  thirty 
divisions  with  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers — equal  numbers 
of  each.  Our  second  army  of  thirty  divisions  should  be  wholly 
equipped  with  240-millimeter  howitzers;  and  our  expected 
production  of  these,  being  beyond  our  own  contemplated  needs, 
would  serve  to  replace  such  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers  as 
had  been  lost  in  the  meantime. 

As  we  adapted  it  from  the  French  Schneider  model,  the 
240-millimeter  howitzer  consisted  of  four  main  parts — the 
howitzer  barrel,  the  top  carriage,  the  cradle  with  recoil  mecha- 
nism,   and   the   firing   platform.    Each    of   these   four   parts 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 


THE  240-MILLIMETER  HOWITZER 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

COMPLETED  75-MILLIMETER  GUN  CARRIAGES 


Photo  from  Ordnance  Department 

CAISSONS  ON  SHIPPING  PLATFORM 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

SHIPPING  75-MILLIMETER  GUN  CARRIAGES 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  97 

had  its  own  transportation  wagon  and  limber,  drawn  by  a 
10- ton  tractor.  The  weapon  was  set  up  with  the  aid  of  an 
erecting  frame  and  a  small  hand  crane.  Each  of  the  main  sec- 
tions was  composed  of  numerous  smaller  assembled  parts  made 
of  various  grades  of  iron  and  steel  and  other  raw  materials,  all 
requiring  the  greatest  precision  in  their  manufacture  and  all 
having  to  pass  rigid  and  exacting  tests  for  strength  and 
dimensions.  , 

The  production  of  even  one  of  these  enormous  weapons 
would  have  been  a  hard  job  for  any  American  industrial  plant, 
but  to  manufacture  nearly  1,200  of  them,  and  that  within  the 
comparatively  limited  time  allowed  and  under  the  abnormal 
industrial  and  transportation  conditions  then  prevailing,  was 
a  task  of  tremendous  difficulty  and  complexity. 

On  September  1,  1917,  an  order  was  placed  with  the  Water- 
town  Arsenal  for  261  carriages  for  the  American  240's,  to  be 
turned  out  complete  with  the  recoil  mechanism,  transporta- 
tion vehicles,  tools,  and  accessories.  An  allotment  of  $17,450,- 
000,  set  aside  to  cover  the  estimated  expenses  at  the  arsenal, 
indicates  the  size  of  the  job.  Well  equipped  as  the  Watertown 
Arsenal  was  said  to  be  at  the  time  for  the  production  of  heavy 
gun  carriages,  it  was  found  necessary,  in  order  to  handle  this 
job,  to  construct  a  new  erecting  shop  of  a  capacity  practically 
as  large  as  that  of  all  the  other  buildings  of  the  plant  put 
together.  The  number  of  employees  at  the  arsenal  was 
increased  from  1,200  to  more  than  3,000.  The  greatest  diffi- 
culty experienced  was  in  obtaining  the  large  number  of  heavy 
machine  tools  required,  and  experts  were  sent  out  to  scour  the 
countr}^  in  an  effort  to  locate  these  tools  wherever  they  might 
be  available.  Raw  materials  could  not  be  procured  in  suffi- 
cient quantities,  and  numerous  transportation  delays  impeded 
the  work.  Finally,  in  October,  1918,  the  pilot  carriage  was 
completed,  and  sufficient  progress  had  been  made  on  the  entire 
contract  to  assure  production  of  the  required  number  of  units 
in  the  early  part  of  1919. 

A  second  carriage  contract  (November  16,  1917)  went  to 
the  Standard  Steel  Car  Company,  of  Hammond,  Indiana.  This 


98  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

called  for  the  delivery  of  1,004  carriages,  complete  with 
transportation  vehicles,  limbers,  tools,  etc.,  but  not  with 
recuperators.  These  the  Otis  Elevator  Company,  of  New  York, 
undertook  to  deliver.  The  Standard  Steel  Car  Company  is  one 
of  the  most  important  builders  of  railway  cars,  freight  and 
passenger,  in  the  country,  and  it  possessed  a  large  and  well- 
equipped  plant.  Nevertheless,  the  company  was  compelled  to 
construct  several  additional  buildings  and  practically  to  double 
the  capacity  of  its  huge  erecting  shop  in  order  to  prepare  ade- 
quately for  the  tremendous  task  undertaken.  To  save  time, 
subcontracts  were  immediately  placed  with  more  than  a 
hundred  firms  throughout  the  East  and  Middle  West  for 
the  production  and  machining  of  as  many  as  possible  of 
the  component  parts  needed  by  the  Standard  Steel  Car  Com- 
pany. Wherever  practicable,  the  subcontractors  working  on 
similar  contracts  for  the  Watertown  Arsenal  were  retained  by 
the  Indiana  company,  so  that  better  prices  might  be  obtained, 
parts  standardized,  and  the  whole  production  facilitated.  Once 
the  work  was  well  under  way,  the  ramifications  of  this  one 
contract,  with  its  subcontracts  for  parts,  materials,  tools,  build- 
ing construction,  etc.,  extended  throughout  practically  the 
entire  industrial  facilities  of  the  eastern  and  central  sections 
of  the  country. 

As  happened  in  connection  with  the  contract  given  the 
Watertown  Arsenal,  there  were  many  difficulties  in  obtaining 
tools  and  raw  materials.  Many  allocations,  mostly  for  iron  and 
steel  products,  had  to  be  obtained  through  the  War  Industries 
Board.  When  allocations  had  been  granted,  priority  orders  had 
to  be  secured,  for  the  producers  of  these  materials  were  already 
overworked  with  government  orders  of  varying  importance. 

With  the  pilot  carriage  complete  in  the  early  part  of  Octo- 
ber, production  on  all  the  main  parts  had  progressed  by  Novem- 
ber to  such  a  point  that  a  large  output  of  finished  carriages  was 
assured  for  December  and  thereafter,  had  not  the  signing  of 
the  armistice  ended  the  necessity  for  further  expedition  of  the 
work. 

Orders  for  howitzer-body  forgings  were  placed  as  follows: 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  99 


Bethlehem  Steel  Company,  November  21,  1917     . 
Edgcwater  Steel  Company,  October  24,  1917 
Tacony  Ordnance  Corporation,  November  14,  1917 
Watertown  Arsenal,  November  10,  1917 
American  Bridge  Company,  March  31,  1918 


Sets 

237 
175 
175 

80 
800 


The  Watervliet  Arsenal  was  instructed  on  November  20, 
1917,  to  do  the  machining  of  forgings  so  as  to  turn  out  250 
gun  bodies  for  the  240-millimeter  howitzers,  and  three  months 
later  this  order  was  doubled.  On  November  7,  1918,  an  addi- 
tional 660  were  ordered  from  Watervliet,  making  a  grand 
total  of  1,160  howitzer  cannon  of  this  caliber  ordered  machined 
and  completed  at  the  Watervliet  Arsenal.  The  arsenal  con- 
tracted to  reach  an  output  of  100  cannon  a  month  and  to 
deliver  the  last  of  the  1, 160  not  later  than  September  30,  1919. 

It  was  found  necessary  to  erect  an  entirely  new  shop  for 
the  machining  of  these  howitzers.  This  shop  was  completed  in 
May,  1918.  During  the  war  period  $13,164,706  was  spent  or 
allotted  to  the  Watervliet  Arsenal  for  increasing  its  facilities. 
Forgings  were  furnished  to  the  arsenal  by  the  Government,  but 
the  forging  situation  was  never  a  delaying  factor  in  the  pro- 
duction of  240-millimeter  howitzers. 

In  the  summer  of  1918  the  Watertown  Arsenal  contracted 
to  build  252  additional  recuperators  for  these  howitzers.  Work 
was  started  at  once  in  the  shops,  and,  though  additional  facili- 
ties had  to  be  prepared  and  much  new  equipment  added,  the 
production  of  the  first  recuperator  was  begun  without  delay. 
It  was  found  that  the  planing  equipment  at  the  arsenal  was 
not  sufficient  to  handle  the  work,  and  therefore  a  great  deal 
of  the  rough  planing  was  done  by  subcontractors. 

The  Watertown  Arsenal  was  to  furnish  its  own  forgings, 
but  it  was  quickly  found  that  an  additional  source  of  supplies 
was  required.  The  Carnegie  Steel  Company  had  been  given  an 
order  on  December  27,  1917,  for  1,300  recuperator  forgings, 
and  some  of  these  were  sent  to  the  Watertown  Arsenal.  The 
first  recuperator  was  completed  October  28,  1918.  The  pilot 


loo  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

howitzer,  minus  the  recuperator,  went  to  the  proving  ground  on 
August  24,  1918. 

To  handle  its  order  for  1,039  recuperators,  the  Otis  Ele- 
vator Company,  of  New  York,  found  it  necessary  to  rebuild 
a  plant  which  it  owned  in  Chicago.  Forgings  were  furnished 
by  the  Government. 

On  May  1,  1918,  the  Otis  Elevator  Company  started  its 
rough  machining.  Hard  spots  found  in  the  metal  caused  great 
trouble  at  first,  but  this  difficulty  was  overcome  by  changes  in 
the  heat  treatment.  The  Carnegie  Steel  Company  was  then 
instructed  to  rough-machine  the  forgings  before  sending  them 
to  the  Otis  Elevator  Company.  An  order  was  also  given  to  the 
Midvale  Steel  Company  to  rough-machine  twenty-four  forg- 
ings. Early  in  January,  1919,  the  Otis  Elevator  Company 
finished  its  first  recuperator. 

One  240-millimeter  howitzer  unit  was  completed  at  the  time 
of  the  signing  of  the  armistice;  but  had  war  conditions  con- 
tinued, the  expectation  was  that  the  contractors  by  1919  would 
reach  a  production  rate  of  eighty  complete  units  a  month. 

FIGHTING  THE  AIRPLANE  WITH  ARTILLERY 

The  American  development  of  anti-aircraft  artillery  had, 
previously  to  1917,  been  confined  almost  exclusively  to  the 
task  of  designing  and  constructing  stationary  units  of  defense 
for  our  coast  fortifications.  It  was  naturally  expected  that  at 
those  points  we  should  first,  if  ever,  have  to  meet  an  attack 
from  the  air.  Little  attention  had  been  paid  to  mobile  artillery 
of  this  sort. 

Before  April,  1916,  the  Ordnance  Department  had  designed 
a  high-powered  3-inch  anti-aircraft  mount  for  fixed  emplace- 
ment at  coast  fortifications.  The  gun  on  this  mount  fired 
a  15-pound  projectile  with  a  muzzle  velocity  of  2,600  feet  a 
second.  It  was  the  most  powerful  anti-aircraft  weapon  of 
its  caliber.  Between  May,  1916,  and  June  18,  1917,  orders 
for  160  of  these  mounts  were  placed  with  the  Watertown 
Arsenal  and  the  Bethlehem  Steel  Company.  Up  to  April  10, 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY  loi 

1919,  a  total  of  1 16  had  been  completed  and  sent  for  emplace- 
ment at  the  points  selected. 

By  the  end  of  1916,  however,  it  was  foreseen  that  it  would 
be  necessary  to  provide  anti-aircraft  artillery  of  a  mobile  type 
as  part  of  the  equipment  for  any  field  forces  that  might  be  sent 
abroad.  Since  such  a  contingency  seemed  entirely  possible  at 
that  time,  and  since  it  appeared  to  be  impossible  to  provide  a 
suitable  design  which  would  have  sufficient  time  to  receive 
proper  consideration  and  test,  it  was  decided  to  improvise  a 
simple  structural  steel  design  which  would  permit  quick  con- 
struction and  on  which  a  75-millimeter  field  gun,  already  in 
production,  could  be  mounted.  This  design  was  completed  May 
1,  1917,  and  an  order  for  fifty  placed  with  the  Builders'  Iron 
Foundry.  Deliveries  on  these  were  made  during  the  fall  of 
1917,  and  the  carriages  were  at  once  shipped  to  France  to  be 
equipped  with  French  field  guns  and  recuperators  that  had 
been  already  procured  for  the  purpose. 

In  mobility  the  improvised  anti-aircraft  gun  mount  was  far 
from  perfect.  It  was  necessary  to  disassemble  it  partly  and 
mount  it  on  trailers.  The  need  for  a  mount  that  could  be  moved 
easily  and  speedily  had  been  realized  before  our  entrance  in 
the  war,  and  a  design  embodying  these  qualities  was  completed 
as  early  as  December,  1916.  This  truck  was  designed  to  be 
equipped  with  the  American  75-millimeter  field  gun,  model  of 
1916.  Before  the  drawings  were  completed  an  order  for  the 
pilot  mounts  of  this  type  was  placed  with  the  Rock  Island 
Arsenal.  The  war  came  on,  and  it  was  decided  not  to  wait  for  a 
test  of  the  mounts  before  starting  general  manufacture.  Accord- 
ingly the  New  Britain  Machine  Company,  in  July,  1917, 
was  given  an  order  for  fifty-one  carriages.  No  further  orders 
were  placed  for  carriages  of  this  sort,  as  it  was  not  thought  best 
to  go  too  heavily  into  production  of  an  untried  mount. 

It  should  be  noted  here  that  our  first  twenty-six  anti-aircraft 
guns  were  mounted  on  White  i^^-ton  trucks. 

It  was  also  realized  that  the  field  guns  with  which  these 
mounts  were  to  be  equipped  did  not  have  the  power  and  range 
that  war  experience  was  showing  to  be  necessary.  The  only 


102  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

reasons  why  the  field  guns  of  the  75-millimeter  caliber  were 
used  in  this  way  was  that  they  were  the  guns  most  quickly 
available  and  that  the  French  were  already  using  them  for  this 
purpose. 

To  meet  the  need  of  more  powerful  anti-aircraft  weapons,  a 
need  becoming  more  pressing  each  day,  a  3-inch  high-powered 
anti-aircraft  gun  was  designed  and  mounted  on  a  four-wheel 
trailer  of  the  automobile  type.  This  mount  permitted  eleva- 
tions of  the  gun  from  10  degrees  to  85  degrees  and  also 
allowed  for  "all-around"  firing.  An  order  for  612  of  these 
carriages  was  given  to  the  New  Britain  Machine  Company  in 
July,  1917,  shortly  after  the  contract  for  the  fifty-one  truck 
mounts  had  been  placed  with  that  concern. 

Because  of  the  urgency  of  the  situation  it  was  necessary  to 
construct  these  carriages  without  the  preliminary  tests  on  a 
pilot  carriage.  This,  of  course,  is  an  undesirable  practice, 
but  under  the  existing  conditions  no  other  procedure  would 
have  been  practicable.  The  French  anti-aircraft  auto-truck 
mount,  which  carried  the  French  75-millimeter  field  gun,  with 
its  recuperator,  placed  upon  a  special  anti-aircraft  mount,  was 
not  adopted  at  the  time,  because,  in  July,  1917,  the  whole 
question  of  the  possibility  of  constructing  French  recuperators 
in  this  country  was  still  entirely  unsettled.  It  was  imperative 
then  that  we  develop  our  own  designs. 

All  the  fifty-one  truck  mounts  for  the  anti-aircraft  guns  were 
delivered  during  the  fall  and  early  winter  of  1918,  and  twenty- 
two  of  them  were  in  France  before  December,  1918. 

Delivery  of  the  first  carriage  for  the  3-inch  high-powered 
gun  mounted  on  the  trailer  carriage  was  made  in  August, 
1917.  It  had  been  rushed  ahead  of  general  production  in  order 
to  be  given  some  sort  of  test.  No  further  deliveries  were  made, 
but  the  manufacture  reached  a  point  where  production  in  quan- 
tity could  soon  begin. 

A  representative  of  the  Ordnance  Department  was  sent  to 
France  and  England  in  December,  1917,  to  gather  all  the 
information  possible  about  anti-aircraft  artillery.  As  a  result 
of  his  investigations  it  was  determined  that  it  would  be  best 


MOBILE  FIELD  ARTILLERY 


103 


to  procure  the  greater  part  of  our  fire-control  equipment  in 
France,  since  some  of  the  instruments  developed  there  were 
highly  complicated  and  their  manufacture  was  entirely  con- 
trolled by  private  persons.  Orders  were  placed  for  enough  of 
these  instruments  for  the  equipment  of  the  first  125  batteries. 


Froduction  of  Mobile  Artillery  {Complete  Units),  April 
7,  /p/7,  to  November  11,  igi8 

[Including  all  produced  for  France  and  Great  Britain 
in  United  States] 

Shipped 
Traduced       overseas 


75-mm.  guns  (or  British  i8-pounder) 
3-inch  and  75-mm.  anti-aircraft  guns  . 
4.5-inch  howitzers  .... 
4.7-inch  guns  ..... 
155-mm.  and  5-inch  and  6-inch  seacoast  guns 
155-mm.  howitzers  .... 
7-inch  guns  on  caterpillar  mounts 
Railway  artillery  .... 
Heavy  howitzers  .... 


Total 


970 

97 

97 

157 

121 

144 

"10 

20 

*4i8 

2,034 


^26 
97 

64 

'114 

o 

0 

11 

322 

815 


^  Does  not  include  fifty-one  improvised  mounts  for  which  guns  were 
furnished  by  French. 

*  Includes  sixteen    155-mm.  guns  and   carriages  shipped  without  recu- 
perators. 

*  Built  for  the  Marine  Corps. 

*  Includes  sixteen  8-inch  howitzers  built  for  the  Marine  Corps. 


Meanwhile,  fire-control  instruments  of  various  types  were 
in  the  process  of  development  in  this  country;  but,  as  they  were 
largely  based  upon  theoretical  construction  derived  from  study 
of  the  French  practices,  it  was  deemed  best  not  to  manufacture 
any  of  them  in  quantity,  when  better  instruments  of  French 
design  were  available.  Drawings  of  the  French  instruments 
were  available  in  this  country  in  the  spring  of  1918,  when 
manufacture  of  some  of  them  began  in  the  United  States. 

At  the  signing  of  the  armistice  our  forces  in  France  were 


104  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

equipped  almost  wholly  with  anti-aircraft  artillery  loaned  to 
us  or  supplied  outright  by  the  French.  This  equipment,  of 
course,  did  not  include  the  loi  improvised  mounts  completed 
during  1917.  Our  production,  however,  had  reached  such  a 
point  that  shipment  of  material  would  have  begun  in  quantity 
in  January,  1919. 

The  estimated  requirements  in  anti-aircraft  artillery  for  an 
army  of  forty-eight  divisions  (2,000,000  men)  were  only  120 
guns.  Other  anti-aircraft  weapons  were  required  in  the  defense 
of  depots,  railheads,  etc.,  the  number  required  depending  in 
great  measure  upon  the  ability  of  our  own  air  forces  to  keep 
the  enemy  bombers  away.  It  is  estimated  that  about  two 
hundred  anti-aircraft  guns  were  required  for  the  rear  defenses 
of  forty-eight  divisions. 


i 


Sept. 

Oct. 

Nov. 

Dec. 

Total 

113 

30 

72 

799 

15 

363 
909 

51 

2 

7 

3 

256 

1 

1 

417 
28 
92 

625 

29 

24 

16 

19 

492 

245 

29 

20 

25 

7 

182 

189 

82 

116 

26 

4460 

)nent  parts  were  complete, 
itional  time. 


Production  of  Complete  Artillery  Units,  by  Months 
(Deliveries  in  the  United  Sutes  on  U.  S.  Army  Orders  Only) 


Jan.    Feb.  Mar.  Apr.    May   June    July   Aug.  Sept.    Oct.  Nov.  Dec.    Jan.    Feb.    Mar.  Apr.    May  June    July  Aug.  Sept.    Oct.  Nov.   Dec.  Total 


^S'mm.  gun.  Model  1917 
3-mch  anti-aircraft  gun 


13        46        44        S7 


67        66       97        64 


116       78       65       45 


19        27        39        30        2/         7         183 
}J9       144       189        82       1 16        26      4460 


CHAPTER  V 

RAILWAY  ARTILLERY 

JL  S  soon  as  war  was  declared  against  Germany  the  Ord- 
/-%  nance  Department,  in  its  search  for  an  immediate 
Jl  1L  equipment  of  strong  artillery,  surveyed  the  ordnance 
supplies  of  the  country  and  discovered  some  464  heavy  guns 
which  could  be  spared  from  the  seacoast  defenses,  obtained 
from  the  Navy,  or  commandeered  at  private  ordnance  plants 
where  they  were  being  manufactured  for  foreign  governments. 
There  were  six  guns  of  this  last-named  class — powerful  12- 
inch  weapons  which  had  been  produced  for  the  Chilean  Gov- 
ernment. It  was  seen  that  if  all,  or  a  large  part,  of  these  guns 
could  be  made  available  for  service  in  France,  America  could 
quickly  provide  for  herself  a  heavy  artillery  equipment  of 
respectable  proportions. 

The  guns  thus  made  available  ranged  in  size  from  the  7-inch 
guns  of  the  Navy  to  the  single  enormous  16-inch  howitzer 
which  had  been  built  experimentally  by  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment before  1917.  The  list  of  these  guns  according  to  number, 
size,  length,  and  source  whence  obtained  was  as  follows : 


Number  of 

guns 

Size 

Length 

Source  whence  obtained 

Inches 

Calibers* 

12 

7 

45 

Navy 

96 

8 

35 

Seacoast  defenses 

129 

10 

34 

Seacoast  defenses 

49 

12 

35 

Seacoast  defenses 

6 

12 

50 

In  manufacture  for  Chile 

150  ( 

Tiortars) 

12 

10 

Seacoast  defenses 

21 

14 

50 

Navy 

*  The  expression  "14-inch  gun,  50  calibers"  means  that  the  gun  has  a  barrel 
diameter  of  14  inches  and  that  the  gun  body  is  fifty  times  the  caliber  of  14 
inches,  or  700  inches  (58  feet,  4  inches),  long. 


io6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

In  addition  to  these  there  was  the  1 6-inch  howitzer,  20  calibers 
in  length,  which  had  been  built  by  the  Ordnance  Department 
before  1917. 

The  Ordnance  Department  conceived  that  the  only  way  to 
make  these  guns  available  for  use  abroad  was  to  mount  them 
on  railway  cars.  The  guns  were  not  vital  to  the  defense  of  our 
coast  under  the  conditions  of  the  war  with  Germany,  and  it 
was  evident  that  they  would  make  a  valuable  type  of  long- 
range  artillery  when  placed  on  satisfactory  railway  mounts. 

Mounting  heavy  artillery  on  railway  cars  was  not  an  idea 
born  of  the  recent  war.  The  idea  was  probably  originally 
American.  The  Union  forces  at  the  siege  of  Richmond  in  1863 
mounted  a  13-inch  cast-iron  mortar  on  a  reinforced  flat  car. 
This  was  the  first  authenticated  record  of  the  use  of  heavy  rail- 
way artillery.  In  1913  the  commanding  officer  of  the  defenses 
of  the  Potomac,  which  comprise  Forts  Washington  and  Hunt, 
was  called  on  to  report  upon  the  condition  of  these  defenses. 
In  reply,  he  advised  that  no  further  expenditure  be  made  on 
any  one  of  the  fixed  defenses,  but  recommended  that  a  "strate- 
gic railroad"  be  built  along  the  backbone  of  the  peninsula  from 
Point  Lookout  to  Washington,  with  spurs  leading  to  predeter- 
mined positions  both  on  Chesapeake  Bay  and  the  Potomac 
River,  so  placed  as  to  command  the  approaches  to  Washington 
and  Baltimore.  Further,  he  recommended  that  four  major- 
caliber  guns,  sixteen  medium-caliber  guns,  and  twenty-four 
mine-defense  guns  be  mounted  on  railroad  platforms,  with 
ammunition,  range-finding,  and  repair  cars  making  up  com- 
plete units,  so  that  this  armament  could  be  quickly  transported 
at  any  time  where  most  needed.  He  suggested  that  this  scheme 
be  made  applicable  to  any  portion  of  the  coast  line  of  the 
United  States.  His  argument  was  based  upon  the  fact  that 
guns  in  fixed  positions,  of  whatever  caliber,  violate  the  cardinal 
military  principle  of  mobility. 

The  nations  engaged  in  the  World  War  developed  to  a  high 
stage  the  use  of  heavy  artillery  mounted  on  railway  cars,  bring- 
ing about  a  combination  of  the  necessary  rigidity  with  as  great 
mobility  as  is  compatible  with  the  weight  of  this  material. 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  107 

Railway  artillery  came  to  be  as  varied  in  its  design  as  field 
artiller}^  Each  type  of  railway  mount  had  certain  tactical  uses, 
and  it  was  not  considered  desirable  to  use  the  different  types 
interchangeably.  The  three  types  of  cannon  used  on  railway 
mounts  were  mortars,  howitzers,  and  guns.  It  was  not  practi- 
cable to  use  the  same  type  of  railway  mounts  for  the  different 
kinds  of  cannon.  Moreover,  these  mounts  differed  radically 
from  the  mounts  for  such  weapons  at  the  seacoast  defenses. 

The  three  general  types  of  railway  mounts  adopted  were 
those  which  gave  the  gun  all-around  fire  (360-degree  traverse), 
those  which  provided  limited  traverse  for  the  gun,  and  those 
which  allowed  no  lateral  movement  for  the  gun  on  the  car- 
riage, but  were  used  on  curved  track,  or  epis,  to  give  the 
weapons  traverse  aim.  The  smaller  weapons,  such  as  the  7- 
inch  and  8-inch  guns  and  the  12-inch  mortars,  were  placed  on 
mounts  affording  360-degree  traverse.  The  limited-traverse 
mounts  were  used  for  the  moderately  long-range  guns  and 
howitzers.  The  fixed  type  of  mount  was  used  for  the  biggest 
guns  only,  and  included  the  sliding  railway  mounts,  such 
as  the  American  12-inch  and  14-inch  sliding  mounts  and  the 
French  Schneider  a  glissement  mounts. 

The  work  of  providing  railroad  artillery — that  is,  taking 
the  big,  fixed-position  guns  already  in  existence  within  the 
United  States,  and  similar  guns  being  produced,  and  designing 
and  manufacturing  suitable  mounts  for  them  on  railway 
cars — grew  into  such  an  important  undertaking  that  it  en- 
listed the  exclusive  attention  of  a  large  section  within  the 
Ordnance  Department.  This  organization  eventually  found 
itself  engaged  in  ten  major  construction  projects,  which  in 
time,  had  the  war  continued,  would  have  delivered  more  than 
300  of  these  monster  weapons — most  of  them  to  the  field  in 
France  and  some  to  the  railway  coast  defenses  of  the  United 
States.  As  it  was,  so  much  of  the  construction — the  machining 
of  parts,  and  so  on — was  complete  at  the  date  of  the  armistice 
that  it  was  decided  to  go  ahead  with  all  the  projects  except 
three,  these  latter  involving  the  mounting  of  sixteen  guns  of 
14-inch  size,  50  calibers  long,  the  production  of  twenty-five 


io8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

long-range  8-inch  guns,  50  calibers,  and  their  mounting  on 
railway  cars,  and  the  mounting  of  eighteen  coast-defense  10- 
inch  guns,  34  calibers  long,  on  the  French  BatignoUes  type  of 
railway  mount. 

Inasmuch  as  it  will  be  necessary  in  this  chapter  to  refer 
to  the  barbette,  Schneider,  and  BatignoUes  types  of  gun 
mounts  for  railway  artillery,  it  should  be  made  clear  to  the 
reader  what  these  types  are. 

The  barbette  carriage  revolves  about  a  central  pintle,  or 
axis,  and  turns  the  gun  around  with  it.  When  it  was  decided 
to  put  coast-defense  guns  on  railway  cars,  the  guns  were  taken 
from  their  emplacements,  barbette  carriages  manufactured  for 
them,  and  the  whole  mounted  upon  special  cars.  The  barbette 
mount  revolves  on  a  support  of  rollers  traveling  upon  a  circu- 
lar base  ring.  In  the  railway  mount  the  base  ring  is  attached 
to  the  dropped  central  portion  of  the  railway  car.  The  barbette 
railway  mount  is  provided  with  struts  and  plates  by  which  the 
car  is  braced  against  the  ground. 

The  Schneider  railway  mount  is  named  after  the  French 
ordnance  concern,  Schneider  et  Cie.,  who  designed  it.  In  this 
mount  the  gun  and  its  carriage  are  fastened  rigidly  parallel  to 
the  long  axis  of  the  railway  car.  Thus  the  gun  itself,  inde- 
pendently of  any  movement  of  the  car,  can  be  pointed  only 
up  and  down  in  a  vertical  plane,  having  no  traverse  or  swing 
from  left  to  right.  In  order  to  give  the  weapon  traverse  for 
its  aim,  special  curved  tracks,  called  epis,  are  prepared  at  the 
position  where  it  is  to  be  fired.  The  car  is  then  run  along  the 
curve  until  its  traverse  aim  is  correct,  and  the  vertical  aim  is 
achieved  by  the  movement  of  the  gun  itself.  In  the  Schneider 
mount  there  is  no  recoil  mechanism:  the  recoil  is  absorbed  by 
the  retrograde  movement  of  the  car  along  the  rails  after  the 
gun  is  fired.  This  movement,  of  course,  puts  the  gun  out  of  aim, 
and  the  entire  unit  must  then  be  pushed  back  to  the  proper 
point. 

In  the  BatignoUes  type,  gun  and  cradle  are  mounted  on  a 
so-called  top  carriage  that  permits  small  changes  in  horizontal 
pointing  right  and  left.  With  railway  artillery  of  the  Bati- 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  109 

gnolles  type  also,  track  curves,  or  epis,  are  necessary  for  accu- 
rate aiming.  The  Batignolles  mount  partially  cushions  the  re- 
coil by  the  movement  of  the  gun  itself  in  the  cradle.  In 
addition,  a  special  track  is  provided  at  the  firing  point,  and  the 
entire  gun  car  is  run  upon  this  track  and  bolted  to  it  with 
spades  driven  into  the  ground  to  resist  what  recoil  is  not  taken 
up  in  the  cradle.  The  unit  is  thus  stationary  in  action,  and  the 
gun  can  be  more  readily  returned  to  aim  than  a  gun  on  a 
Schneider  mount. 

7-INCH  RIFLES 

The  conditions  under  which  the  war  with  Germany  was 
fought  virtually  precluded  any  chance  of  a  naval  attack  on 
our  shores  which  would  engage  our  fixed  coast  defenses.  The 
British  Grand  Fleet,  with  the  assistance  of  fleets  of  the  other 
Allies  and  America,  had  the  German  battle  fleet  securely  bot- 
tled. On  the  other  hand,  there  was  the  prowling  submarine, 
able  at  all  times  to  go  to  sea  and  even  to  cross  the  ocean;  and 
some  of  the  latest  of  these  submarines  were  armed  with  long- 
range  medium-caliber  guns.  It  was  not  beyond  possibility  that 
some  sort  of  attack  would  be  made  on  our  shores  by  submarines 
of  this  scope ;  but  it  was  safe  to  believe  that  these  craft  would 
keep  well  out  of  range  of  the  guns  at  our  stationary  coast 
defenses. 

To  protect  our  coast  from  such  attack,  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment conceived  the  plan  of  mounting  heavy  guns  on  railway 
cars.  They  could  then  be  moved  quickly  to  places  on  the  sea- 
coast  which  needed  defense.  For  this  purpose  the  Navy  turned 
twelve  of  its  7-inch  rifles  over  to  the  Ordnance  Department 
for  mounting.  Meanwhile  our  ordnance  officers  had  designed 
certain  standard  railway  artillery  cars,  known  as  models  1918, 
1918  Mark  I,  and  1918  Mark  II,  for  7-inch  and  8-inch  guns 
and  12-inch  mortars,  respectively.  All  these  cars  had  the  same 
general  features. 

The  Model  1918  car  was  selected  for  the  converted  7-inch 
navy  rifle.  The  rifle  was  mounted  on  a  pedestal  set  on  the  gun 
car  in  such  a  manner  as  to  give  all-around  fire,  or  360-degree 


no  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

traverse.  The  pedestal  mount  permitted  the  gun  to  be  depressed 
to  an  angle  suitable  for  firing  from  high  places  along  the  coast 
down  upon  the  low-lying  submarines. 

Contracts  for  the  various  parts  for  these  cars  and  the  pedes- 
tal gun  mounts  were  let  to  concerns  engaged  in  heavy  steel 
manufacture,  but  the  assembling  was  done  by  the  American 
Car  &  Foundry  Company,  of  Berwick,  Pennsylvania.  Twelve 
of  the  7-inch  rifles  were  so  mounted.  As  this  equipment  was 
intended  exclusively  for  use  in  this  country,  the  gun  cars  were 
equipped  with  the  American  type  of  car  couplings. 


8-INCH  GUNS 

For  the  8-inch  guns  taken  from  seacoast  fortifications  the 
Ordnance  Department  designed  a  barbette  mount  giving  com- 
plete 360-degree  traverse.  There  were  ninety-six  such  guns 
available  for  railway  mounts.  Orders  for  forty-seven  gun  cars, 
with  carriages  for  mounting  the  weapons,  were  placed  with 
three  concerns — the  Morgan  Engineering  Company,  of  Al- 
liance, Ohio,  the  Harrisburg  Manufacturing  &  Boiler  Com- 
pany, of  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania,  and  the  American  Car  & 
Foundry  Company,  of  Berwick.  Two  of  the  three  contractors 
found  it  necessary  to  provide  additional  facilities  and  machine- 
tool  equipment  at  their  plants  in  order  to  handle  this  job. 

The  first  railway  mount  for  the  8-inch  gun  was  completed 
and  sent  to  the  Aberdeen  Proving  Ground  for  test  in  May, 
1918.  In  early  June  the  test  had  shown  that  the  weapon  was 
efficient  and  entirely  satisfactory.  Before  the  end  of  the  year 
1918  a  total  of  twenty- four  complete  units,  with  ammunition 
cars  for  standard-gauge  track,  shell  cars  for  narrow-gauge 
track,  transportation  cars,  tools,  spare  parts,  and  all  the  other 
necessary  appurtenances  of  a  unit  of  this  sort,  had  been  com- 
pleted. Three  complete  8-inch  units  were  shipped  overseas 
before  the  armistice  was  signed. 

When  the  armistice  came,  the  Harrisburg  company  had 
delivered  nine  of  these  mounts  and  the  Morgan  Engineering 
Company  an  equal  number — eighteen  in  all.  The  former  con- 


Photo  from   Ordnanct'  Department 

THE  AMERICAN  7-Ix\CH  RAILWAY  GUN 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 


8-INCH  RAILWAY  GUN 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Depaiti:ui:t 

12-INCH  RIFLE  ON  SLIDING  RAILWAY  MOUNT 


idnance  Department 

THE  16-INCH  HOWITZER 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  in 

cem  had  reached  an  output  of  five  mounts  a  month  and  the 
latter  ten  a  month. 

An  interesting  feature  of  this  mount  is  that  it  can  be  used 
either  on  standard-gauge  or  on  narrow-gauge  railroad  track. 
The  narrow  gauge  adopted  was  that  in  standard  use  in  the 
fighting  zones  in  France,  the  distance  between  the  rails  being 
sixty  centimeters,  or  the  approximate  equivalent  of  twenty- 
four  inches.  Each  gun  car  was  provided  with  interchangeable 
trucks  to  fit  either  gauge.  The  artillery  train  necessary  for  the 
maneuvering  of  the  weapon  was  also  similarly  equipped  to 
travel  on  either  sort  of  track. 

As  a  rule,  the  longer  the  barrel  of  a  cannon,  the  greater  its 
range.  The  8-inch  seacoast  guns  thus  mounted  were  35  calibers 
in  length;  that  is,  thirty-five  times  eight  inches,  or  23  feet, 
4  inches.  The  requirements  of  our  forces  in  the  field  in  France 
called  for  guns  of  this  same  size,  but  of  longer  range.  Conse- 
quently an  8-inch  gun  of  50  calibers— that  is,  ten  feet  longer 
than  the  seacoast  8-inch  gun — was  designed,  and  twenty-five 
were  ordered.  This  project  came  as  a  later  development  in  the 
war,  the  guns  being  intended  for  use  abroad  in  1920.  The  rail- 
way mounts  for  the  weapons  had  not  been  placed  in  production 
when  the  armistice  came.  Because  of  the  incomplete  status  of 
this  project  in  the  autumn  of  1918,  the  whole  undertaking 
was  abandoned. 

10-INCH  AND  12-INCH  GUNS 

There  were  at  the  seacoast  defenses  and  in  the  stores  of  the 
Army  a  large  number  of  10-inch  guns  of  34  calibers.  Of  these, 
129  were  available  for  mounting  on  railway  cars.  It  was  pro- 
posed to  mount  these  weapons  on  two  types  of  French  railway 
mounts — the  Schneider  and  the  Batignolles. 

The  project  to  mount  thirty-six  of  these  weapons  on 
Schneider  mounts  was  taken  up  as  a  joint  operation  of  the 
United  States  and  French  governments,  the  heavy  forging 
and  rough  machining  to  be  done  in  this  country  and  the  finish- 
ing and  assembling  in  the  French  shops.  The  American  con- 
tractors were  three.  The  Harrisburg  Manufacturing  &  Boiler 


112  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Company  undertook  to  furnish  the  major  portion  of  the  fabri- 
cated materials  for  the  carriages  and  cars;  the  Pullman  Car 
Company  contracted  to  produce  the  necessary  trucks  for  the 
gun  cars ;  and  the  American  Car  &:  Foundry  Company  engaged 
to  build  the  ammunition  cars. 

Eight  sets  of  fabricated  parts  to  be  assembled  in  France 
had  been  produced  before  the  armistice  was  signed.  General 
Pershing  had  requested  the  delivery  in  France  of  the  thirty- 
six  sets  of  parts  by  March  2,  1919.  After  the  armistice  was 
signed  there  was  a  natural  let-down  in  speed  in  nearly  all  ord- 
nance factories,  but  even  without  the  spur  of  military  neces- 
sity the  contracting  concerns  were  able  by  April  7,  1919,  to 
deliver  twenty-two  of  the  thirty-six  sets  ordered.  Had  the  war 
continued  through  the  winter,  there  is  little  question  but  that 
all  thirty-six  would  have  been  in  France  on  the  date  specified. 

The  10-inch  seacoast  gun,  Batignolles  mount,  project  was 
placed  exclusively  in  the  hands  of  the  Marion  Steam  Shovel 
Company,  of  Marion,  Ohio.  It  had  been  proposed  also  to  mount 
1 2-inch  seacoast  guns  on  this  same  type  of  equipment,  and  this 
work,  too,  went  to  the  Marion  concern.  There  were  to  be  pro- 
duced eighteen  of  the  10-inch  units  and  twelve  of  the  larger 
ones.  The  Marion  Steam  Shovel  Company  had  had  a  large 
experience  in  producing  heavy  construction  and  road-building 
equipment.  The  concern  encountered  numerous  difficulties  at 
the  start  in  translating  the  French  drawings  and  in  substituting 
the  American  standard  materials  for  those  specified  by  the 
French.  These  difficulties,  combined  with  struggles  to  obtain 
raw  materials  and  the  equipment  for  the  increased  facilities 
which  had  to  be  provided  at  the  factory,  so  delayed  production 
that  no  mount  for  either  the  10-inch  or  12-inch  guns  had  been 
delivered  at  the  time  of  the  armistice.  The  first  mount  of  these 
classes — one  with  a  12-inch  gun — reached  the  Aberdeen  Prov- 
ing Ground  about  April  1,  1919.  The  10-inch  project,  calling 
for  eighteen  mounts,  was  canceled  soon  after  November  11, 
1918.  The  work  on  the  dozen  mounts  for  12-inch  guns,  how- 
ever, had  progressed  so  far  that  the  Ordnance  Department 
ordered  the  completion  of  the  entire  equipment. 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  113 

As  we  have  stated,  the  Government  found  in  this  country- 
six  12-inch  guns  being  made  for  the  Republic  of  Chile.  Their 
length  of  50  calibers  gave  them  a  specially  long  range.  It  was 
decided  to  place  the  Chilean  guns  on  sliding  mounts.  In  a 
mount  of  this  type,  the  retrograde  movement  of  the  car  along 
the  track  as  and  after  the  gun  is  fired  takes  up  and  absorbs 
the  energy  of  fire. 

The  first  sliding  railway  mount  used  on  the  Allied  side  in 
the  World  War  was  of  French  design.  But  our  manufacturers 
had  so  much  trouble  with  French  designs  that,  when  the  proj- 
ect of  mounting  the  Chilean  guns  in  this  fashion  came  up,  it 
was  decided  that  it  would  be  quicker  to  design  our  own  mount. 
Consequently  the  French  design  was  taken  in  hand  by  our 
ordnance  engineers  and  redesigned  to  conform  to  American 
practice,  with  the  inclusion  in  the  design  of  all  original  ideas 
developed  by  the  Ordnance  Department  in  its  creative  work 
during  the  war  period  up  to  that  time.  The  manufacturers  who 
looked  at  the  French  design  of  the  sliding  railway  mount 
estimated  that  it  would  take  from  twelve  to  eighteen  months 
before  the  unit  could  be  duplicated  in  this  countr}^  and  the  first 
deliveries  made.  They  looked  at  the  American  design  and 
estimated  that  they  could  build  it  in  three  months. 

It  was  decided  to  build  three  of  these  mounts,  so  as  to  have 
a  reserve  of  one  gun  for  each  mount,  to  serve  as  replacement 
when  the  guns  first  mounted  were  worn  out.  Contracts  were 
placed  in  the  early  summer  of  1918,  and  all  three  mounts  were 
delivered  before  the  armistice  was  signed,  the  first  mount  being 
completed  within  eighty-five  days  after  the  order  was  placed. 
For  these  mounts  the  American  Bridge  Company  furnished 
the  main  girders  or  side  pieces,  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Com- 
pany built  the  railway  trucks,  and  the  Morgan  Engineering 
Company  manufactured  the  many  other  parts  and  assembled 
the  complete  units.  The  speed  in  manufacture  was  fnade  pos- 
sible by  the  fact  that  the  plant  engineers  of  the  three  companies 
helped  the  ordnance  officers  in  designing  the  details.  With  such 
intimate  cooperation,  the  concerns  were  able  to  begin  the  manu- 


1 14  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

facture  of  component  parts  while  the  drawings  were  being 
made. 

All  three  weapons,  with  their  entire  equipment,  including 
supplies,  spare  parts,  ammunition  cars,  and  the  whole  trains 
that  make  up  such  units,  were  ready  for  shipment  to  France  in 
November,  1918.  Each  mount  was  105  feet  long  and  weighed 
600,000  pounds.  The  load  of  the  gun  and  the  peak  load  put  on 
the  carriage  when  the  gun  was  fired  were  so  great  that  it 
required  four  trucks  of  eight  wheels  each,  thirty-two  car  wheels 
in  all,  to  distribute  the  load  safely  over  ordinary  standard- 
gauge  track. 

12-INCH  MORTARS 

In  years  past,  the  Ordnance  Department  had  procured  a  large 
number  of  12-inch  mortars  for  use  at  seacoast  defenses.  These 
great  weapons  are  10  calibers  in  length,  or  ten  feet  in  linear 
measurement.  Of  the  number  stationed  at  the  coastal  forts  and 
in  reserve,  it  was  decided  that  150  could  be  safely  withdrawn 
and  prepared  for  use  against  Germany.  When  General  Persh- 
ing was  informed  of  the  proposal,  he  asked  that  forty  of  these 
weapons,  mounted  on  railway  cars,  be  delivered  to  the  Ameri- 
can Expeditionary  Forces  for  use  in  the  planned  campaign  of 
1919.  In  order  that  there  might  be  an  adequate  supply  of  them, 
the  Ordnance  Department  let  contracts  for  the  mounting  of 
ninety-one  of  these  mortars  on  railway  equipment,  a  project 
calculated  to  give  the  United  States  a  formidable  armament 
and  still  provide  a  reserve  of  fifty-nine  mortars  to  replace  the 
service  mortars  on  the  carriages  after  repeated  firing  had  worn 
them  out. 

This  job  proved  to  be  one  of  the  largest  in  the  whole  artil- 
lery program.  The  entire  contract  was  let  to  the  Morgan  Engi- 
neering Company,  of  Alliance,  Ohio.  In  order  to  handle  the 
contract,  a  special  ordnance  plant,  costing  $1,700,000  for  the 
building  alone,  had  to  be  constructed  at  the  company's  works 
at  Alliance.  The  work  was  so  highly  specialized  that  machine 
tools  designed  for  the  particular  purpose  had  to  be  produced. 
The  Government  itself  bought  these  tools  at  a  cost  of  $1,800,- 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  115 

000.  Although  work  on  this  plant  was  not  started  until  Decem- 
ber 10,  1917,  and  although  thereafter  followed  weeks  upon 
weeks  of  the  severest  winter  weather  known  in  years,  with 
all  the  delays  in  the  deliveries  of  materials  which  such  weather 
conditions  brought  about,  the  plant  was  entirely  complete  on 
June  1,  1918,  and  not  only  that,  but  the  work  of  producing  the 
mounts  had  started  in  it  long  before,  some  machines  getting 
to  work  as  early  as  April. 

The  gun  car  used  for  mounting  the  mortar  carriage  was  of 
the  same  design  as  that  for  the  7-inch  and  8-inch  guns,  except 
that  each  truck  had  six  wheels.  The  carriage  built  upon  this 
car  was  of  the  barbette  type,  and  it  allowed  the  gun  to  be 
pointed  upward  to  an  angle  as  high  as  65  degrees  and  provided 
complete  traverse,  so  that  the  mortar  could  be  fired  in  any 
direction  from  the  car.  A  hydropneumatic  system  for  absorb- 
ing the  recoil  of  the  mortar  after  firing  was  adopted.  This 
recuperator  in  itself  was  a  difficult  problem  for  the  manu- 
facturer to  solve,  for  it  was  the  first  hydropneumatic  recu- 
perator of  its  size  ever  built  in  this  country. 

In  spite  of  the  weight  and  complexity  of  this  unit,  it  was 
put  into  production  in  an  astonishingly  short  space  of  time. 
The  pilot  mount  came  through  on  August  22,  1918,  less  than 
nine  months  after  the  spade  was  first  struck  into  the  ground  to 
begin  the  erection  of  the  ordnance  plant.  By  the  end  of  August 
the  pilot  mortar  had  successfully  passed  its  firing  tests  at 
Aberdeen,  functioning  properly  at  angles  of  elevation  from 
22  degrees  to  65  degrees  and  in  any  direction  from  the  mount. 
This  unit  was  put  through  hurriedly  for  these  tests;  but  the 
preparation  for  the  rest  of  the  deliveries  was  made  on  a  grand 
scale,  looking  toward  quantity  production  later  on.  When  the 
armistice  was  signed,  every  casting,  forging,  and  structural 
part  for  every  one  of  the  ninety-one  railway  mounts  was  on 
hand  and  completed  at  the  works  of  the  Morgan  Engineering 
Company,  and  thereafter  the  process  was  to  be  merely  one  of 
assembling,  although  in  a  unit  of  such  size  the  assembling  job 
alone  was  of  great  magnitude.  Even  at  the  reduced  rate  of  pro- 
duction incident  to  the  relaxation  of  tension  after  the  armistice 


ii6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

was  signed,  the  company  delivered  forty-five  complete  units  to 
the  Government  up  to  April  7,  1919,  or  five  more  than  General 
Pershing  had  said  he  would  require  during  the  whole  campaign 
of  1919.  Careful  estimates  show  that  if  the  war  had  continued 
the  company  would  have  delivered  the  mounts  at  the  rate  of 
fifteen  a  month  beginning  on  December  15,  1918,  a  rate  which 
would  have  completed  the  entire  project  for  ninety-one  mounts 
by  the  middle  of  June,  1919. 

Like  the  8-inch  railway  guns,  the  12-inch  mortars  were  pro- 
vided with  interchangeable  wheel  trucks  which  would  allow  the 
unit  to  travel  and  work  either  on  standard-gauge  track  or  on 
the  60-centimeter,  narrow-gauge  track  of  the  war  zone  in 
France. 

14-INCH  GUNS 
The  War  Department  did  not  have  any  14-inch  guns  which 
could  be  spared  from  the  seacoast  defenses  for  use  abroad. 
The  Ordnance  Department  therefore  inaugurated  the  project 
for  the  construction  of  sixty  guns  of  14-inch  caliber.  For  the 
construction  of  such  guns,  complete  new  plants  were  required, 
for  all  available  facilities  were  already  taken  over  for  other 
projects  considered  more  important.  This  contract  was  to  have 
been  turned  out  by  the  Neville  Island  ordnance  plant.  The 
Navy  Department  in  May,  1918,  expressed  willingness  to 
turn  over  to  the  Army  certain  14-inch  guns,  50  calibers,  then 
under  construction,  of  which  it  was  estimated  that  thirty  would 
be  completed  by  March,  1919. 

It  was  decided  to  place  some  of  these  14-inch  guns  on  Ameri- 
can sliding  railway  mounts,  and  sixteen  such  mounts  were 
ordered  from  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works,  deliveries  to 
begin  February  1,  1919.  The  sixteen  units  were  to  be  delivered 
before  April,  1919,  but  the  signing  of  the  armistice  suspended 
work  on  the  contracts,  for  the  mounts  had  been  designed  for 
use  in  France.  The  contract  was  canceled  in  March,  1919. 

THE  NAVY'S  RAILWAY  BATTERIES 

It  was,  however,  in  mounting  14-inch  naval  guns  for  field 
service  that  the  United  States  scored  a  success  in  France  which 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  117 

is  likely  to  be  remembered  long  after  the  details  of  our  muni- 
tions program  are  forgotten  and  which  probably  will  live  in 
interest  with  the  story  of  the  Monitor  and  that  of  the  operation 
of  the  railway  batteries  in  the  Civil  War.  This  exploit  was 
not  a  war  department  affair  at  all,  but  was  the  single-handed 
achievement  of  the  Navy,  to  which  this  seems  to  be  a  fitting 
place  to  pay  tribute. 

On  March  23,  1918,  a  little  after  7  o'clock  in  the  morning 
(the  great  and  final  German  drive  having  started  two  days 
earlier),  the  inhabitants  of  Paris  living  near  the  Quai  de  Seine 
were  startled,  and  some  of  them  were  killed  and  injured,  by 
a  mysterious  explosion.  Scarcely  had  the  military  authorities 
of  the  city  been  apprised  of  this  occurrence  when  there  was 
another  explosion,  equally  inexplicable,  but  in  another  section 
of  the  city ;  and  all  day  long,  at  intervals  approximately  twenty 
minutes  in  duration,  these  explosions  recurred.  An  investiga- 
tion by  the  French  military  authorities  soon  developed  the 
fact  that  Paris  was  under  bombardment  by  a  German  gun  of 
novel  construction.  The  air  forces  located  the  long-range  gun 
in  the  Gobain  forest,  at  Laon,  approximately  seventy  miles 
away  from  the  city! 

The  whole  civilized  world  buzzed  with  excitement  at  this 
feat,  admiration  for  the  mechanical  exploit  disputing  with 
condemnation  of  the  ruthlessness  which  for  the  sake  of  a  mere 
demonstration  of  frightfulness  and  without  hope  of  military 
benefit  could  shell  the  helpless  civilians  of  a  theoretical  for- 
tress. The  intermittent  shelling  of  Paris  by  Big  Bertha,  as  the 
Allies  promptly  named  the  mysterious  gun  in  honor  of  the 
heiress  of  the  Krupps,  continued  as  long  as  the  Germans  con- 
tinued to  advance;  but  the  day  was  to  come  when  the  enemy 
was  to  be  treated  to  a  like  surprise  on  his  side.  That  day  was 
September  6,  1918.  Tergnier  was  an  important  railroad  junc- 
tion within  the  German  lines  between  Laon  and  Amiens.  The 
town  was  being  hard  pressed  by  the  Allies,  but  it  still  lay 
comfortably  back  out  of  range  of  the  biggest  field  guns  which 
the  Allies  had  produced  during  the  war.  The  German  troops 
were  busily  switching  cars  in  the  yards  at  Tergnier  when  all 


ii8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

unheralded  came  a  shell  into  their  midst,  blowing  out  a  crater 
into  which  they  could  have  tumbled  a  church.  The  enemy, 
without  debate,  began  at  once  to  evacuate  Tergnier.  The  shell 
had  come  from  the  first  of  the  American  navy  14-inch  guns  to 
get  into  action,  which  thus  won  its  first  engagement  with  a 
single  shot. 

The  American  navy  guns  were  the  heaviest  weapons  used 
in  the  field  against  the  Germans  during  the  war,  and  on  the 
German  side  are  only  to  be  compared  with  the  Big  Bertha 
which  shelled  Paris.  Yet  this  comparison  is  most  interesting, 
affording  a  contrast  of  national  psychology  as  well  as  of 
materiel.  The  German  gun  had  a  maximum  range  of  121,000 
yards  against  a  maximum  of  45,000  yards  for  the  American 
gun,  and  the  German  shell  sped  on  its  mission  with  a  muzzle 
velocity  of  4,760  feet  per  second  against  a  muzzle  velocity  of 
2,800  feet  per  second  for  the  American  gun.  But  here  the 
favorable  comparison  ends  for  the  German  weapon.  The 
recoil  force  of  the  American  gun  was  more  than  six  times  as 
heavy  as  that  of  the  German  gun,  the  American  gun  mount 
having  to  brake  a  firing  load  of  800,000  pounds,  as  compared 
with  the  firing  load  of  127,500  pounds  exerted  by  Big  Bertha. 
The  German  shell  weighed  only  204  pounds.  The  American 
naval  gun  fired  a  projectile  weighing  1,400  pounds  and  de- 
posited eighty-eight  pounds  of  high  explosive  at  the  objective, 
sufficient  to  gouge  out  a  crater  seventy  feet  in  diameter.  The 
lighter  German  shell  could  indeed  do  considerable  damage  to 
structures  in  a  city,  but  it  carried  with  it  no  such  annihilation 
as  did  the  American  shell.  In  other  words,  the  German  gun 
was  a  demonstration,  a  stunt  pure  and  simple;*  whereas  the 
American  naval  batteries  were  put  in  the  field  for  business, 
the  business  of  winning  a  war.  Big  Bertha  made  no  contribu- 
tions along  this  line.  She  could  kill  a  few  hundred  helpless 
civilians,  but  the  American  guns  annoyed  and  upset  some  of 

*  In  fairness  it  should  be  stated  that  the  German  High  Command  probably 
expected  the  bombardment  to  start  a  general  exodus  from  Paris,  thus  loading 
the  railroads  with  civilian  travel  and  interfering  to  that  extent  with  military 
movements. 


Drawn  by  Albert  Hoit  Bumstead 

THE  SHI 

Larger  map  shows  location  of  German  Ic 
to    Paris.   Inset   shows    emplacements    (A,    ] 


THE  SHELLING  OF  PARIS 

Cripy    (undcrscoiid)— wiih    nlation 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  119 

the  enemy's  field  operations  as  no  other  artillery  had  been  able 
to  do. 

The  German  long-range  guns  were  mounted  on  railway 
cars  for  transportation  and  afterwards  mounted  on  turntable 
emplacements.  It  took  two  weeks  to  build  one  of  these  em- 
placements. The  American  gun  could  fire  from  the  rails  within 
ten  minutes  after  arriving  at  any  position — another  element 
of  practical  superiority. 

Several  of  the  belligerents  were  using  railway  artillery  when 
we  entered  the  war.  Germany,  England,  and  France  had  all 
taken  naval  guns  and  mounted  them  for  operation  in  the  field 
by  naval  crews.  The  German  railway  artillery  outranged  that 
of  the  French  and  British.  Thus  there  was  precedent  for  the 
American  Navy's  Bureau  of  Ordnance  when  in  November, 
1917,  it  decided  to  take  a  number  of  14-inch  guns  and  mount 
them  on  railway  trucks  for  service  in  France.  These  gims  were 
50  calibers  in  length,  nearly  sixty  feet.  The  guns  were  ready  at 
hand,  held  in  reserve ;  and,  since  the  war  had  had  the  effect  of 
stopping  battleship  construction  in  favor  of  the  construction 
of  destroyers  and  other  small  craft  for  hunting  submarines, 
there  was  little  likelihood  of  the  weapons  being  needed  at  sea 
during  the  war. 

On  November  26,  1917,  the  Chief  of  Naval  Operations 
authorized  the  plan.  Less  than  thirty  days  later  the  designers 
at  the  Naval  Gun  Factory  in  Washington  had  turned  out  com- 
plete construction  plans  for  the  equipment.  Each  battery  was 
to  consist  of  a  locomotive,  gun  car,  two  ammunition  cars,  three 
construction  cars,  one  workshop  car,  one  fuel  car,  three  berth 
cars,  one  kitchen  car,  and  one  headquarters  car — a  total  of  thir- 
teen cars  and  one  locomotive  to  the  battery  train.  Five  such 
batteries  were  authorized.  In  addition,  there  was  provided  a 
staff  train  of  seven  cars  and  a  locomotive. 

The  gun  car,  the  most  important  unit,  weighed  about 
535,000  pounds,  or  considerably  more  than  the  heaviest  of 
locomotives.  This  weight  was  distributed  over  the  track  by 
twenty-four  car  wheels,  one  truck  of  twelve  wheels  under  each 
end  of  the  gun  car.  The  principal  construction  feature  of  the 


120  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

car  consisted  of  two  long  main  girders,  eacli  seventy-two  feet 
long,  tied  together  to  form  a  single  girder  unit  with  a  center 
well  in  which  the  gun  was  mounted. 

The  mount  was  designed  to  be  used  in  two  ways  in  the  field. 
For  ranges  up  to  23,000  yards,  requiring  angles  of  gun  eleva- 
tion up  to  15  degrees,  the  gun  could  be  fired  from  the  rails.  The 
recoil  was  absorbed  by  a  hydraulic  brake  plus  the  retrograde 
movement  of  the  gun  car  with  its  wheel  brakes  set,  the  car 
moving  backward  a  distance  of  twenty-five  feet  when  the  gun 
was  fired  at  the  elevation  of  15  degrees.  If  greater  ranges  were 
desired,  making  it  necessary  to  fire  the  gun  at  higher  angles 
(its  extreme  angle  and  range  being  43  degrees  and  45,000 
yards),  it  was  necessary  to  mount  the  gun  on  a  special  em- 
placement. This  emplacement  could  be  built  in  twenty  hours. 
The  battery  train  carried  tools  and  materials  for  the  construc- 
tion of  such  emplacements.  The  emplacement  was  so  con- 
structed that  by  means  of  jacks  the  gun  and  its  mount  could  be 
quickly  and  easily  let  down  upon  it  from  the  gun  car. 

There  were  many  ingenious  features  incorporated  in  this 
design,  one  of  them  being  the  loading  device.  The  1,400- 
pound  shell  came  to  the  gun  car  from  the  ammunition  car  con- 
veyed by  an  overhead  monorail.  At  the  gun  car  the  shell  was 
placed  on  a  car  which  ran  up  and  down  an  inclined  I  beam 
leading  to  the  gun  breech.  The  crew  grasped  the  handles  of  the 
shell  car  and  ran  the  length  of  the  cab  with  it.  At  the  end  of  the 
I  beam  the  shell  car  was  stopped  suddenly  by  hydraulic  buffers. 
Thereafter  the  momentum  of  the  shell  carried  it  on  through  the 
powder  chamber  of  the  gun  and  forced  it  into  the  rifling. 

The  gun  car  was  sheathed  in  quarter-inch  armor  plate,  as 
were  the  ammunition  cars.  These  latter  were  standard  steel- 
frame  box  cars  of  60,000  pounds'  capacity.  Each  ammunition 
car  could  hold  twenty-five  shell  and  twenty-five  powder 
charges  on  its  racks.  One  of  the  construction  cars  in  each  bat- 
tery mounted  a  10-ton  crane.  The  berthing  cars  were  box  cars 
fitted  with  folding  berths.  One  of  the  cars  of  the  staff  train  was 
a  traveling  machine  shop  equipped  with  motor-driven  tools. 

Bids  for  the  construction  of  this  equipment  were  opened  on 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  121 

February  13,  1918.  The  construction  of  the  five  gun  cars  and 
locomotives  went  to  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works,  the  vice- 
president  of  which,  Mr.  S.  M.  Vauclain,  was  with  the  War 
Industries  Board.  Mr.  Vauclain  became  an  enthusiast  for  the 
14-inch  railway  gun  project,  and  it  was  largely  due  to  him  that 
the  batteries  were  manufactured  in  time  enough  to  be  operated 
in  France.  The  Baldwin  Works  agreed  to  deliver  the  locomo- 
tives and  gun  cars  about  June  15.  To  the  Standard  Steel  Car 
Company  went  the  contract  for  the  construction  of  the  other 
cars — seventy-two  of  them.  This  concern  promised  complete 
delivery  in  from  100  to  120  days. 

The  whole  job  was  put  through  in  an  astonishingly  brief 
time.  The  first  gun  mount  was  complete  and  ready  for  firing  on 
April  28,  and  all  five  were  delivered  by  May  25,  three  weeks 
ahead  of  schedule.  The  Standard  Steel  Car  Company  pro- 
duced all  the  other  rolling  stock  by  June  1 ,  and  this  in  spite  of 
a  windstorm  and  fire  that  nearly  destroyed  one  of  the  shops  in 
which  the  cars  were  being  built.  The  locomotives,  too,  were 
produced  on  time. 

The  next  step  was  to  ship  the  parts  to  France  and  assemble 
the  equipment  there.  The  original  plan  had  been  to  operate 
these  guns  with  the  British  Army  in  defense  of  the  Channel 
ports.  Conditions  in  the  spring  of  1918  were  such,  however, 
that  the  British  were  unable  to  designate  any  of  their  ports  in 
France  which  they  were  sure  of  holding  until  the  material 
could  arrive.  The  Navy  therefore  offered  the  batteries  to 
General  Pershing,  who  promptly  accepted  them  and  designated 
St.  Nazaire  as  the  port  of  debarkation  and  place  of  assembly 
for  them. 

One  difficulty  after  another  then  arose  to  impede  the  project. 
The  first  ship  assigned  to  carry  the  material  to  France  was  so 
badly  battered  by  a  storm  on  her  trip  from  France  to  Philadel- 
phia, where  the  equipment  was  collected,  that  she  had  to  go 
into  drydock  for  repairs.  The  second  ship  so  assigned  was  sunk 
by  a  German  submarine  off  the  American  coast.  Finally  the 
S.  S,  Newport  News  took  on  the  first  load  of  material  at  Phila- 
delphia and  sailed  for  France  on  June  29. 


122  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

In  France,  more  troubles.  The  bluejackets  who  were  to  erect 
and  operate  the  batteries  had  been  sent  to  France  early,  arriv- 
ing at  St.  Nazaire  on  June  9,  wearing  overseas  caps  and  a 
khaki  uniform  much  like  that  of  the  Army.  The  first  job  was 
to  put  up  some  barracks.  Wood  being  scarce,  the  gobs  built 
their  shore  quarters  out  of  packing-case  material  in  which 
American  locomotives  had  come  crated  to  St.  Nazaire.  That 
took  a  week.  Then  the  battery  men  built  tracks  on  which  to 
assemble  their  cars,  borrowed  a  stationary  boiler  and  a  pump 
with  which  to  supply  air  to  their  riveters,  installed  them, 
mended  the  holes  in  a  leaky  air  pipe  line,  and  then  had  gone  as 
far  as  they  could  in  preparation  for  the  task  ahead. 

The  arrival  of  the  materials  was  still  several  weeks  distant. 
And  did  these  sailors  thereupon  proceed  to  enjoy  their  leisure 
and  the  section  of  France  available  for  their  excursions'?  They 
did  not.  St.  Nazaire  was  the  port  which  received  and  assembled 
the  military  railroad  materials  shipped  from  the  United  States. 
There  was  a  roundhouse  there,  extensive  railway  yards,  and 
dozens  of  erecting  tracks,  with  the  19th  Engineers,  U.  S.  A., 
in  charge.  The  restless  gobs  therefore  pitched  in  to  help  the 
Army  clear  away  a  congestion  of  work,  running  switch  engines, 
assisting  in  the  roundhouse,  repairing  tracks,  and  so  on,  for 
which  cooperation  they  received  their  reward  later.  Without 
a  locomotive  crane  the  work  of  erecting  the  batteries  would 
have  been  toilsome  indeed.  There  were  just  four  such  cranes 
available  at  St.  Nazaire,  and  the  Army  itself  had  need  of  every 
one  of  them ;  but  nevertheless  when  the  Newport  News  arrived 
in  St.  Nazaire  on  July  8,  the  19th  Engineers  consented  to  lend 
one  of  their  locomotive  cranes  to  the  batteries. 

The  railway  battery  material  arrived  in  three  shiploads  as  a 
huge  and  indiscriminate  collection  of  steel  plates,  beams, 
girders,  trusses,  wheel  trucks,  and  so  on,  not  forgetting  the 
five  great  gun  tubes.  Imagine  trying  to  put  together  five  gun 
cars,  five  locomotives,  and  some  seventy  railway  cars  of  miscel- 
laneous sorts  out  of  such  a  mass  of  material  without  a  blue 
print  or  a  scrap  of  printed  directions !  Yet  that  is  just  what  had 
to  be  done.  The  blue  prints  were  sent  from  the  United  States 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  123 

by  special  mail  in  ample  time  to  reach  St.  Nazaire  ahead  of 
the  material ;  but,  whether  the  ship  on  which  they  traveled  was 
torpedoed,  at  any  rate  they  never  reached  their  destination. 
The  battery  commander  sent  for  another  set,  but  before  they 
reached  France  the  assembling  job  was  about  complete. 

When  the  erectors  broke  open  the  first  box  marked  "rivets"  it 
was  found  to  contain  stove  bolts.  A  hasty  investigation  showed 
that  all  the  similar  boxes  held  stove  bolts  instead  of  rivets. 
Thereupon  ensued  a  search  of  a  large  part  of  industrial  France 
to  secure  rivets,  thousands  and  thousands  of  them,  for  there 
was  not  a  car  in  the  whole  assemblage  that  did  not  require  at 
least  500  rivets  to  be  driven.  And  when  the  French  rivets  came 
it  was  discovered  that  their  dimensions  were  all  according  to 
metric-system  measurements,  whereas  the  rivet  holes  in  the 
American  plates  had  English  dimensions.  Therefore  none  of  the 
rivets  fitted ;  but  the  sailors  used  them  nevertheless,  sometimes 
heating  and  hammering  and  drawing  them  to  make  them  fit. 

None  of  these  embarrassments,  however,  delayed  the  work. 
The  fixed  working  hours  for  the  erecting  gangs  were  from 
7 :  30  a.m.  to  noon  and  from  1 :  00  to  5:  15  p.m.,  but  the  men 
refused  to  quit  when  the  whistle  blew.  The  long  summer  eve- 
nings in  France  gave  light  enough  to  see  until  almost  ten 
o'clock  at  night,  and  the  gobs  stuck  to  it,  night  after  night, 
until  it  was  too  dark  to  do  any  more  work.  The  result  was  that 
the  first  battery  was  ready  to  move  to  the  front  on  August  1 1 , 
and  all  five  were  ready  for  action  on  September  16. 

This  is  perhaps  not  the  place  to  tell  about  the  operation  of 
the  batteries  at  the  front,  but  enough  may  be  said  to  show  their 
extraordinary  value.  The  French  prepared  to  give  the  batteries 
elaborate  proving  tests  at  their  ground  at  Nuisement,  but  when 
Battery  No.  1  had  planted  its  first  four  shell  within  a  stone's 
throw  of  a  target  eighteen  miles  away,  the  French  general 
called  off  the  test  and  sent  the  battery  immediately  to  Soissons 
to  bombard  the  railroad  yards  at  Laon. 

It  was  during  the  final  drive  of  the  Americans  and  French 
that  the  batteries  were  able  to  render  greatest  service.  The  most 
important  supply  line  behind  the  German  front  was  the  rail- 


124  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

road  running  northwest  on  a  straight  line  from  Metz  to  Sedan, 
paralleling  the  trenches  and  making  it  easy  for  the  Germans  to 
shift  troops  from  spot  to  spot.  For  four  years  this  track  had 
lain  safely  out  of  range  of  the  Allies'  biggest  guns,  and  during 
these  four  years  the  Germans  had  greatly  improved  the  road 
and  brought  it  to  a  high  state  of  efficiency.  The  alternative  line 
was  a  right  angle,  one  leg  leading  north  to  Luxemburg  and  the 
other  thence  west  to  Sedan — 50  per  cent  farther  and  poor 
track.  For  the  strategic  importance  of  the  Metz-Sedan  line,  it 
is  enough  to  say  that  when  Pershing  cut  it  at  Sedan  the  war 
was  over. 

When  three  of  the  American  naval  batteries  opened  up  on 
this  railroad  from  points  near  Verdun  the  Metz-Sedan  railroad 
was  no  longer  immune  from  shell  fire.  The  Germans  furiously 
resented  the  innovation  and  concentrated  efforts  to  put  the 
guns  out  of  action,  shelling  the  positions  from  the  ground  and 
bombing  them  from  the  air.  More  than  once  the  armor  sheath- 
ing saved  the  guns  and  ammunition  cars  from  serious  injury. 
All  three  guns  maintained  their  bombardment  to  the  end,  Bat- 
tery No.  4  firing  a  shell  at  10 :  57 :  30  o'clock  on  the  morning  of 
November  11.  Within  a  few  days  thereafter  the  full  extent 
of  the  damage  done  by  this  monster  artillery  was  discovered. 
Here  and  there  the  tracks  had  been  cut  for  distances  as  long 
as  seventy  feet.  For  days  at  a  time  the  railroad  service  had  been 
interrupted,  forcing  the  enemy  to  use  the  roundabout  Luxem- 
burg route.  The  entire  lower  Montmedy  freight  yards  had  been 
burned,  and  it  was  reported  also  that  a  troop  train  in  motion, 
loaded  with  German  soldiers,  had  been  hit  and  demolished. 

After  the  proving-ground  test  of  the  first  railway  14-inch 
gun  (on  April  30,  1918)  the  Ordnance  Department  of  the 
Army  asked  the  Navy  to  provide  for  the  Army  three  such 
gun  cars,  together  with  two  ammunition  cars  for  each  mount. 
These  three  units  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works  delivered 
by  July  18.  The  Army  then  asked  for  three  more,  and  the 
Baldwins  built  them  in  less  than  sixty  days.  The  naval  bat- 
teries in  France  were  turned  over  to  the  Army  after  the  armi- 


Photo  by  Howard  E.   Coffin 

EMPLACEMENT  OF  GERMAN  LONG-RANGE  GUN 


U.  S.  NAVAL  BATTERY  NO.  i  SPEAKS 


rhotu  jium  Biiitau  of  Ordnance,   U .  S.  N. 

HAVOC  WROUGHT  BY  U.  S.  NAVAL  GUN  AT  LAON 


Photo  by  Sif/nal  Corps 


1400-POUND  PROJECTILES  FIRED  BY  NAVAL 
RAILW^AY  GUNS 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  125 

stice  and  brought  back  to  the  United  States  for  service  in  our 
railway  coast  defenses. 

The  Navy  recognized  the  chief  weakness  of  these  mounts — 
that  they  could  not  be  fired  at  long  ranges  without  being  placed 
on  prepared  emplacements.  Consequently,  after  the  first  five 
batteries  began  to  demonstrate  their  usefulness  in  the  field,  the 
Navy  Bureau  of  Ordnance  set  to  work  to  design  a  railway  14- 
inch  gun  mount  that  could  fire  from  the  rails  at  angles  of  eleva- 
tion up  to  43  degrees.  Manufacture  of  five  cars  of  the  im- 
proved type  began  in  October  at  the  Baldwin  Locomotive 
Works,  these  to  be  in  France  ready  for  service  by  March  1, 
1919.  The  armistice  intervened  before  any  of  the  units  could 
be  completed,  and  the  order  was  thereupon  cut  down  to  two 
of  the  new  mounts,  the  first  of  which  was  delivered  in  July, 
1919.  This  was  a  huge  affair,  110  feet  long,  weighing  305 
tons,  and  supported  on  forty  car  wheels,  yet  so  built  that  it 
could  be  drawn  over  our  railroads  at  twenty-five  miles  an  hour, 
a  speed  sufficient  to  take  it  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
coast  in  a  week.  Both  of  the  improved  mounts  were  turned  over 
to  the  Army  for  use  in  the  coast  defenses. 

THE  16-INCH  HOWITZER 

Without  discussing  here  the  12-inch  howitzers,  twenty  feet 
long,  which  the  Ordnance  Department  of  the  Army  ordered 
produced  and  mounted  on  railway  trucks,  a  development  for 
use  abroad  in  1920,  we  come,  finally,  to  the  largest  weapon  in 
the  railway  artillery  program — the  16-inch  howitzer.  The  bar- 
rel of  this  mighty  weapon  was  26  feet,  6  inches  long.  The 
American  16-inch  howitzer  had  been  forged  out  and  finished 
earlier  than  the  date  of  America's  entrance  into  the  war.  It 
was  proposed  to  place  this  weapon  on  a  railway  mount  and 
make  it  available  for  use  on  the  western  front. 

The  Ordnance  Department  completed  the  design  for  the 
mount  on  February  10,  1918.  In  order  to  turn  out  the  unit  in 
the  shortest  possible  time,  the  project  was  placed  with  three 
manufacturers,  each  of  whom  was  to  produce  different  parts. 
The  American  Bridge  Company  received  the  order  to  build  the 


126  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

structural  parts,  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works  contracted  for 
the  trucks,  and  the  Morgan  Engineering  Company  undertook 
to  assemble  the  unit  and  also  to  build  the  top  carriage  and  other 
mechanical  parts.  The  contractors  did  a  speedy  job  in  produc- 
ing the  mount  for  this  howitzer. 

In  nearly  all  railway  artillery  of  this  size,  it  is  necessary  to 
provide  bracing  when  the  gun  is  set  up  in  position  for  firing. 
The  1 6-inch  howitzer  mount  was  unique  in  that  the  weapon 
could  be  fired  from  the  trucks  without  any  track  preparation 
whatsoever.  An  exhaustive  test  at  the  Aberdeen  Proving 
Ground  demonstrated  that  this  piece  of  artillery  ranked  with 
the  highest  types  of  ordnance  in  use  by  any  country  in  the 
world. 

In  the  meantime,  orders  had  been  placed  for  sixty-one  addi- 
tional howitzers.  The  American  Expeditionary  Forces  asked 
that  twelve  of  these  enormous  weapons  be  sent  overseas  as  soon 
as  they  could  be  produced,  a  job  which  would  have  extended 
over  a  period  of  months,  if  not  years.  Since  none  of  the  addi- 
tional howitzers  had  been  produced  when  the  armistice  was 
signed,  the  project  of  building  mounts  for  them  never  got 
under  way.  The  pilot  howitzer  and  mount  were  not  shipped 
abroad. 

In  the  design  of  railway  equipment  for  high-angle  weapons 
such  as  howitzers,  two  loads  must  be  considered  by  the  build- 
ers in  order  to  provide  a  gun  car  of  sufficient  strength  to  hold 
its  freight.  One  of  these  loads,  the  lighter  one,  consists  merely 
of  the  ordinary  weight  of  the  gun  and  its  carriage  upon  the  car 
wheels.  The  other  load,  the  so-called  firing  load,  consists  of 
the  weight  of  the  unit  plus  the  additional  weight  of  the  down- 
thrust  of  the  howitzer  when  it  recoils.  The  firing  load  of  the 
1 6-inch  howitzer  is  748,231  pounds.  The  weight  of  748,231 
pounds  must  be  distributed  along  the  tracks  by  the  numerous 
sets  of  wheels  at  the  instant  the  gun  is  fired.  The  mount  for 
the  howitzer  is  so  constructed  that  this  load  is  partly  taken  up 
by  the  slide  of  the  gun  car  along  the  track.  In  addition,  the 
howitzer  is  equipped  with  a  hydraulic  recoil  cylinder.  Thus  the 
unit  has  a  double  recoil  system.  In  the  tests  the  car  trucks  com- 


RAILWAY  ARTILLERY  127 

fortably  transmitted,  through  a  series  of  equalizer  springs,  this 
enormous  load  upon  an  ordinary  rock-ballast  track,  without 
any  distortion  of  the  track  or  roadbed  or  impairment  of  the 
working  parts  of  the  unit.  After  each  discharge  the  whole  huge 
mount  moves  backward  along  the  track  for  a  distance  of  twenty 
to  thirty  feet. 

Each  railway  artillery  project  called  for  the  manufacture 
of  a  great  equipment  of  ammunition  cars,  fire-control  cars, 
spare-parts  cars,  supply  cars,  and  the  like,  a  complete  unit  being 
a  heavy  train  in  itself.  Such  armament-train  cars,  together  with 
numerous  other  accessories  and  necessary  equipment,  were  de- 
signed by  the  Ordnance  Department  and  produced  for  each 
mount.  In  all,  530  ammunition  cars  were  produced  up  to  April, 
1919.  Most  of  them  were  shipped  abroad,  but  118  were  re- 
tained for  use  in  this  country.  Since  the  overseas  cars  were  to  be 
used  with  French  railway  equipment,  it  was  necessary  to  fit 
them  out  with  French  standard  screw  couplers,  air  brakes,  and 
other  appliances  for  connecting  up  with  French  railway  cars. 

The  matter  of  traction  power  for  these  gun  and  armament 
trains  near  the  front  set  a  problem  for  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment to  solve.  It  was  out  of  the  question  to  use  steam  engines 
near  the  enemy's  lines,  for  the  steam  and  smoke  would  betray 
the  location  of  artillery  trains  at  great  distances.  The  Ordnance 
Department  adopted  a  gas-electric  locomotive  of  400  horse- 
power to  be  used  to  pull  railway  artillery  trains  at  the  front, 
and  was  on  the  point  of  letting  a  contract  to  the  General  Elec- 
tric Company  for  the  manufacture  of  fifty  of  them  when  the 
armistice  was  signed. 

NEVILLE  ISLAND 

It  seems  fitting  at  this  point  to  say  something  about  the  Neville 
Island  ordnance  plant,  on  an  island  in  the  Ohio  River  near 
Pittsburg,  which  would  have  produced  weapons  of  the  type 
used  with  railway  mounts,  and  would  have  turned  them  out  in 
large  numbers,  had  the  armistice  not  come  to  put  an  end  to 
this  enormous  project.  The  plant  was  being  erected  for  the 
Government  by  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  without 


128  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

profit  to  itself.  The  estimated  cost  of  the  finished  plant  was 
$150,000,000.  Designed  to  supply  the  needs  of  the  Army  for 
artillery  of  the  heaviest  types,  the  Neville  Island  plant  was 
being  constructed  on  such  a  scale  that  it  would  surpass  in  size 
and  capacity  any  of  the  famous  gun  works  of  Europe,  including 
that  of  the  Krupps.  It  was  being  equipped  to  handle  huge 
ordnance  undertakings,  such  as  the  monthly  completion  of 
fifteen  great  14-inch  guns  and  the  production  of  40,000  pro- 
jectiles monthly  for  14-inch  and  16-inch  guns.  The  plans  of 
the  Government  contemplated  the  production  of  14-inch  guns 
to  the  number  of  165  in  all  and  their  shipment  to  France  in 
time  to  be  in  the  field  before  May  1,  1920.  An  initial  order 
for  ninety  of  these  weapons  had  been  placed  at  the  arsenal 
while  it  was  being  erected.  Besides  14-inch  guns,  the  plant  was 
being  equipped  to  turn  out  16-inch  and  even  18-inch  weapons. 
The  immense  size  of  the  machinery  necessary  for  such  produc- 
tion can  be  understood  when  it  is  noted  that  an  18-inch  gun 
weighs  510,000  pounds  and  a  14-inch  gun  180,000  pounds. 
It  requires  from  twelve  to  eighteen  months  to  produce  guns  of 
this  size ;  yet  Neville  Island  was  being  developed  on  a  scale  to 
build  hundreds  of  them  simultaneously.  The  entire  plant  was 
to  cover  573  acres  and  was  to  employ  20,000  workmen  when 
in  full  operation. 

At  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  work  was  suspended  at 
Neville  Island,  and  four  months  later  the  whole  project  was 
abandoned. 


Production  of  Railway  Artillery 


byA.E.F.foT 
Total        Number  produced    Number  Produced        campaign  dur-  Guns 

Ordered       loNov.ii./piS         to  Dec. 31,1919  ingi9i9  Available 


n,  rail- 

D-inch,  34-calibcr  seacoast 
French  type  railway  moun 

0-inch,  34-caliber  seacoast 
French  type  railway  moun 

3-inch,  3i-caliber  itacoost 
French  type  railway  moun 

1-inch,  ;o-caliber  gun  on  Ar 
sliding  railway  mount   . 

4-inch,    jo-caliber    naval    g 

nerican 

2-inch,    lo-ealiber    seacoajt 

mortar 

6-inch,  20-caliber  howiticr 

nrail- 

4-lnch,  JO-calibcT  gun  on  Ar 
sliding  railway  mount  . 
1-inch,  2a-caliber  howitzer  c 

n  rail- 

plete,  produced  within  this  country, 
mount  to  be  assembled  in  France 

Project  canceled  on  signing  of  the 
armistice:  Batignollcs 

French  Batignollcs  type 

3uns  obtained  from  Chilean  Govern- 


CHAPTER  VI 
MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY 

THE  armistice  put  an  end  to  one  development  being 
carried  forward  by  the  Ordnance  Department  which, 
in  a  few  months,  would  have  placed  upon  the  field  in 
Europe  the  greatest  improvement  in  field  artillery  since  the 
invention  of  the  quick-firing  cannon.  The  most  advanced  and 
scientifically  equipped  armies  in  the  world  possessed,  in  1917, 
artillery  which  was  mobile  in  the  sense  that  the  field  guns 
could  be  moved  by  horses,  motors,  or  other  exterior  motive 
agencies.  We  proposed  to  make  our  field  artillery  automobile, 
so  that  the  gun  itself  could  move  about  at  the  will  of  its  crew, 
employing  the  power  of  gasoline  motors. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  such  a  realization  must  be 
evident.  America  had  developed  powerful  and  efficient  motor 
trucks;  but  field  guns,  at  least  the  large  ones,  obviously  could 
not  be  mounted  upon  these.  Any  gun  of  the  larger  sizes  is  an 
instrument  which  weighs  tons  upon  tons.  If  a  truck,  even  one 
with  the  driving  power  exerted  upon  all  four  wheels,  were  to 
bog  down  in  mud  or  shell  hole  carrying  a  large  gun,  it  would 
be  unable  to  extricate  itself. 

But  there  had  been  invented  in  America  a  form  of  locomo- 
tion which  could  defy  mud  and  the  uptorn  terrain  of  the 
western  front.  This  was  the  tractor  that  laid  its  own  track,, 
the  familiar  caterpillar.  It  was  man's  closest  mechanical  ap- 
proach to  the  insect  traction  that  can  climb  up  the  side  of  a 
brick  wall.  The  caterpillar  device  had  already  made  possible 
the  British  development  of  the  tank.  With  its  extensive  trac- 
tion surface  distributing  its  weight,  the  caterpillar  will  not 
sink  down  in  soft  going.  It  asks  not  for  roads,  but  only  for 
room  to  move  about  in.  It  is  not  to  be  stopped  by  hills,  holes, 


130  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ditches,  or  even  narrow  trenches.  Thus  it  seemed  to  be 
supremely  well  adapted  for  use  on  shelled  ground. 

Strange  to  say,  not  one  of  the  European  belligerents  seemed 
to  have  attempted  to  adapt  caterpillar  traction  to  the  self- 
movement  of  artillery,  except  the  French.  The  French  had 
developed  a  caterpillar  field-gun  mount  known  as  the  St. 
Chamond  type,  but  this  had  been  brought  little  past  the 
experimental  stage.  Our  own  ordnance  people,  however,  had 
been  working  with  the  idea,  and  in  1917  had  produced  experi- 
mentally the  first  self-propelled  gun  mount  the  world  had 
ever  seen.  The  St.  Chamond  type  was  not  strictly  self-pro- 
pelled, for  its  power  unit — its  tractor,  in  other  words — was 
designed  to  be  uncoupled  from  the  gun  mount  itself.  Our  own 
experimental  mount,  however,  was  self-contained.  It  was  a 
sturdy  vehicle  with  caterpillar,  gasoline  motor,  and  platform 
on  which  the  gun  was  mounted.  At  first  the  thought  was  that 
carriages  of  this  sort  would  be  suitable  only  for  the  lighter 
guns;  but  it  was  decided  to  test  the  experimental  mount  ex- 
haustively. Accordingly,  the  experimenters  mounted  a  big  8- 
inch  howitzer  upon  it  and  then  maneuvered  the  tractor  over 
difficult  ground,  firing  the  howitzer  at  angles  of  elevation 
as  high  as  45  degrees.  (The  greater  the  degree  of  elevation,  of 
course,  the  greater  the  strain  to  the  mount  from  the  recoil  of 
the  weapon.)  Yet  the  experimental  mount,  built  as  it  was  for 
a  light  anti-aircraft  gun,  withstood  all  the  firing  strains  and 
in  addition  carried  its  heavy  load  over  the  broken  ground  in  a 
manner  highly  satisfactory. 

The  experimental  mount  thereupon  became  the  nucleus  of  an 
ambitious  production  program.  The  next  step  was  to  build  and 
test  three  mounts  designed  especially  for  8-inch  howitzers. 
The  first  two  of  these  came  through  and  performed  so  well 
that  the  Ordnance  Department  did  not  wait  for  the  third  to 
receive  its  trials,  but  went  ahead  with  orders  for  fifty  more 
and  also  for  fifty  mounts  of  the  same  sort  for  155-millimeter 
G.  P.  F.  guns.  These  two  mounts,  as  specified,  were  to  be 
almost  identical.  Although  the  howitzer  has  a  muzzle  diameter 
almost  two  inches  greater  than  that  of  the  155-millimeter  gun, 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY  131 

the  latter  is  a  high-powered  weapon  with  an  even  greater  recoil 
force.  Accordingly  the  mount  for  the  l  ^^  was  made  somewhat 
stronger  than  that  for  the  8-inch  howitzer. 

These  caterpillar  gun  mounts  were  to  cost  the  Government 
about  $30,000  apiece,  or  fifteen  times  as  much  as  an  average- 
priced  automobile — an  indication  of  the  size  and  power  of  the 
unit.  The  Harrisburg  Manufacturing  &  Boiler  Company  of 
Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania,  undertook  to  turn  out  the  8-inch 
howitzer  caterpillars,  and  the  Morgan  Engineering  Company 
of  Alliance,  Ohio,  those  for  the  155-millimeter  guns.  Both 
these  concerns  were  manufacturers  of  heavy  steel  products. 

At  the  time  these  orders  were  placed,  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment contracted  with  the  Standard  Steel  Car  Company  at  its 
mill  at  Hammond,  Indiana,  to  build  250  caterpillar  mounts 
for  240-millimeter  howitzers.  This  great  weapon  was  the 
largest  gun  we  attempted  to  put  on  a  self-moving  mount.  In 
its  motorization  program  the  Ordnance  Department  was  not 
rejecting  the  experience  of  the  French,  and  in  the  contract  with 
the  Standard  Steel  Car  Company  it  split  the  mounts  ordered 
into  two  types,  one  a  mount  which  followed  closely  the  St. 
Chamond  mount  in  its  specifications,  and  one,  a  self-contained 
unit,  designed  by  our  own  ordnance  engineers.  By  the  terms  of 
its  contract  the  Standard  Steel  Car  Company  was  to  build  both 
sorts. 

Both  the  American  and  the  French  mounts  possessed  their 
peculiar  advantages.  The  St.  Chamond  mount,  as  indicated, 
was  built  in  two  units,  one  carrying  the  gun  and  electric  motors 
and  the  other,  which  was  the  limber,  carrying  the  power  plant, 
as  well  as  ammunition  for  the  weapon.  When  the  howitzer  was 
in  position  the  power  plant  unit  could  be  run  to  some  place  of 
shelter  near  by,  ready  to  move  the  weapon  wherever  the  situa- 
tion might  demand.  Thus  a  hit  that  disabled  the  howitzer  need 
not  necessarily  cause  its  loss,  since  the  power  unit  could  drag 
it  away  from  danger  and  take  it  to  the  repair  shop.  On  the 
other  hand,  a  direct  hit  could  put  both  gun  and  power  plant 
on  the  American  mount  out  of  commission,  since  both  were 
carried  on  the  single  unit. 


132  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  American  self-propelled  mount,  however,  was  ready  to 
move  the  instant  it  had  fired  its  shot.  This  was  its  marked  ad- 
vantage. As  the  war  progressed,  the  systems,  mechanical  and 
other,  for  spotting  artillery  weapons  on  the  field  grew  con- 
stantly better  and  more  accurate.  It  often  happened  that  a  gun 
which  betrayed  its  position  by  a  shot  met  destruction  within  a 
few  minutes.  The  self-propelled  mount  fires  its  shot  with 
engine  running.  Almost  before  the  projectile  has  reached  its 
destination  the  caterpillar  is  on  the  move,  getting  out  of  range; 
and  if  the  enemy  has  spotted  the  flash  and  opens  fire,  his  shell 
fall  harmlessly  on  a  deserted  position,  the  self-moving  weapon 
meanwhile  having  taken  up  a  new  location. 

None  of  the  contractors  got  into  production  before  the  armi- 
stice. The  project  was  large  and  the  work  of  a  new  type.  More- 
over, the  manufacturing  program  did  not  call  for  complete 
deliveries  until  the  early  part  of  1919.  The  progress  at  the 
three  plants  in  the  autumn  of  1918  indicated  that  these  mounts 
would  come  through  in  time  to  be  of  service  to  the  A.  E.  F. 
in  the  1919  campaign.  In  this  period,  also,  the  Ordnance 
Department  developed  designs  for  two  other  self-propelled 
mounts,  a  2^ -ton  and  a  5-ton  tractor,  both  for  mounting 
75-millimeter  guns. 

The  armistice  put  a  new  face  on  the  matter.  The  self-pro- 
pelled mount  was  confessedly  experimental,  in  the  sense  that 
it  had  received  no  actual  trial  in  battle.  Accordingly,  although 
manufacturers  of  other  large  pieces  of  ordnance  were  permitted 
to  go  through  with  large  portions  of  their  contracts  in  order  to 
conserve  expenditures  already  made,  the  orders  for  caterpillar 
mounts,  relatively  small  though  they  were,  were  radically  cut 
down,  the  amended  program  calling  for  only  enough  mounts 
of  each  type  to  provide  materiel  for  further  experimental  work 
in  the  field. 

NAVY  CATERPILLAR  MOUNTS 

The  Navy,  too,  was  an  innovator  in  the  mounting  of  field 
guns  upon  caterpillars.  It  placed  twenty  7-inch  battleship 
rifles  upon  such  mounts  for  service  in  the  field.  These  mounts 


•^■'•Jir-i iiii  IB   -■•^^i*^^^ 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 


3-INCH  GUN  ON  SELF-PROPELLED  MOUNT 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 

8-INCH  HOWITZER  CLIMBING  RAILROAD  EMBANKMENT 


Photo  jiom   bureau   of   Ordnaiiit,    I'.  S.   N. 

THE  NAVY'S  CATERPILLAR  MOUNT 


Photo  from    Orduuiut   Dcpuitmutt 

21^-TON  ARTILLERY  TRACTOR 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY  133 

were  not  self-propelling,  but  they  were  notable  in  other  ways, 
and  particularly  for  the  reason  that  no  other  nation  on  earth 
had  ever  attempted  to  give  field  mobility  to  guns  as  heavy  and 
as  hard  hitting  as  these.  They  represented  a  distinct  advance 
in  field  artillery  practice.  The  project  of  mounting  these 
weapons  was  a  highly  successful  one,  and  several  of  the  guns 
were  ready  in  plenty  of  time  to  have  crossed  the  ocean  and 
gone  into  action.  The  transport  shortage  at  sea,  however,  kept 
on  this  side  of  the  water  the  guns  and  the  battery  of  marines 
specially  organized  and  trained  to  use  the  pieces  in  the  field. 

A  nation  at  war  must  adapt  itself  to  conditions.  The  7-inch 
navy  field-gun  project  came  about  as  a  sort  of  by-product  of 
one  of  these  quick  adaptations.  All  of  the  available  cruisers 
in  the  American  Navy  in  1918  were  not  numerous  enough  to 
escort  all  the  convoys  of  troopships  and  cargo  transports  need- 
ing protection,  and  it  became  necessary  for  the  Navy  to  take 
several  battleships  of  the  Connecticut  class  and  assign  them  to 
convoy  duty.  Ships  thus  continually  running  the  war  zone  had 
to  be  as  nearly  torpedo-proof  as  they  could  be  made.  Each  ship 
of  the  Connecticut  class  was  equipped  with  a  secondary  battery 
of  7-inch  guns  mounted  between  decks,  a  useful  auxiliary  in 
any  engagement  with  surface  vessels,  but  a  menace  when  the 
antagonist  was  a  submarine.  The  torpedoing  of  a  ship  was 
usually  followed  immediately  by  a  heavy  list,  which  moderated 
after  the  water-tight  bulkheads  began  to  hold  up  the  vessel. 
The  7-inch  batteries  between  decks  on  the  battleships  selected 
for  convoying  necessitated  wide  openings  in  the  vessels'  sides 
down  near  the  water,  making  it  likely  that  any  one  of  them  if 
torpedoed  would  at  the  first  list  take  in  enough  water  through 
these  ports  to  capsize  her.  Accordingly  the  7-inch  guns  were 
removed,  and  the  ports  were  sealed  permanently. 

Thus  was  made  available  a  considerable  number  of  big, 
powerful  guns  for  which  there  seemed  to  be  no  war  use.  They 
were  too  heavy  to  be  mounted  on  the  decks  of  armed  merchant- 
men. The  Army  took  a  dozen  of  these  guns  and  mounted  them 
on  railway  cars  for  coastal  protection,  as  described  in  the  pre- 


134  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ceding  chapter.  The  Navy  was  starting  to  do  likewise  with  a 
few  of  them  when  word  came  from  France  that  if  some  of 
these  guns  were  placed  on  mobile  field  mounts,  the  A.  E.  F. 
would  have  something  that  would  make  the  other  belligerents 
on  both  sides  take  notice. 

Yet,  looked  at  in  any  way,  it  was  a  staggering  project.  The 
gun  was  twenty-six  feet  long  and  weighed  fourteen  tons.  Its 
cradle,  recoil  device,  and  other  elements  of  the  mount  would 
at  least  double  that  weight.  The  gun  when  fired  exerted  a 
recoil  pressure  of  195,000  pounds.  The  shipboard  mount 
allowed  for  an  elevation  of  only  15  degrees,  giving  the  gun 
a  range  of  14,000  yards.  On  the  field  mount  it  was  proposed  to 
allow  for  an  elevation  of  40  degrees,  which  would  make  the 
range  in  the  neighborhood  of  24,000  yards,  or  over  thirteen 
miles.  The  problem  was  to  design  a  mount  capable  of  with- 
standing these  weights  and  pressures  which  still  could  move 
over  difficult  ground.  Moreover,  although  the  project  was  not 
started  until  the  spring  of  1918,  the  Navy  was  asked  to  pro- 
duce these  mounts,  not  in  1919  or  1920,  but  before  the  close 
of  1918.  It  was  proposed  to  make  such  mounts  for  twenty  guns. 

The  Navy  Ordnance  Bureau  first  thought  of  a  wheeled 
mount,  but  a  brief  calculation  showed  that  wheels  would  not 
be  practicable.  Even  with  6-foot  wheels  with  wide  tires,  the 
gun  and  mount  would  put  a  pressure  of  eighty-eight  pounds 
upon  each  square  inch  of  the  tires  in  contact  with  the  ground. 
The  path  of  such  a  weight  over  an  improved  road  would  be 
marked  by  a  crushed  and  broken  roadbed,  and  if  the  piece  left 
the  road  and  got  into  soft  ground,  it  would  soon  become  mired. 
The  caterpillar  form  of  traction  was  the  solution.  Mounted 
on  a  caterpillar  with  a  ground  contact  area  of  twenty-eight 
square  feet,  the  bearing  pressure  would  be  only  eighteen  pounds 
per  square  inch,  or  about  half  that  exerted  by  a  horse's  hoof. 

Caterpillar  traction,  therefore,  was  adopted.  For  motive 
power  to  drag  the  mount  the  Bureau  adopted  the  120-horse- 
power  Holt  caterpillar  tractor,  the  largest  gasoline  tractor 
built  in  the  United  States.  A  special  lengthened  recoil  set — 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY  135 

hydraulic  and  pneumatic  in  combination — was  designed  to 
reduce  the  recoil  pressure  upon  the  carriage.  Practically  every 
other  feature  of  the  mount  had  to  be  designed  anew — scarcely 
any  of  the  parts  of  the  ship  mount  could  be  used.  Starting 
March  15,  the  designers  turned  out  the  completed  drawings 
on  May  25.  On  June  18  the  Baldwin  Locomotive  Works 
accepted  a  contract  to  turn  out  twenty  mounts  by  October  18. 
Mr.  S.  M.  Vauclain,  the  vice-president  of  the  company,  took 
a  special  interest  in  the  contract,  with  the  result  that  the  first 
two  mounts  complete  were  shipped  from  the  factory  on  Sep- 
tember 26,  just  one  hundred  days  from  the  date  of  the  contract. 
The  other  eighteen  mounts  followed  at  intervals  of  two  and 
three  days  each. 

The  first  guns  were  tested  at  Indian  Head,  Maryland,  on 
the  Potomac,  by  a  regiment  of  U.  S.  Marines  assembled  for 
the  purpose.  The  tractors  dragged  the  heavy  guns  up  hill  and 
down,  along  hillsides  and  over  newly  plowed  ground.  The 
guns  could  go  anywhere  the  tractors  could.  The  range  was 
found  to  be  24,000  yards.  The  mounts  proved  themselves  able 
to  keep  the  guns  in  battery  during  continued  firing. 

Army  ordnance  officers  watched  these  tests,  and  as  a  result 
the  Ordnance  Department  of  the  Army  at  once  asked  the  Navy 
to  construct  thirty-six  such  mounts  for  the  Army.  This  contract 
also  went  to  the  Baldwins.  The  armistice  found  the  project  so 
well  advanced  that  it  was  possible  to  cancel  the  orders  for  only 
eighteen  of  these  army  mounts. 

The  present  day  therefore  finds  the  United  States  in  posses- 
sion of  thirty-eight  7-inch  mobile  field  guns, — twenty  with  the 
Marine  Corps  and  eighteen  with  the  Army, — the  highest 
powered  weapons  ever  given  mobile  field  mounting  by  any 
nation.  At  a  range  of  14,000  yards  the  shell  of  one  of  these 
guns  can  penetrate  several  feet  of  concrete  or  earthworks, 
exploding  a  bursting  charge  of  twenty-four  pounds  of  trinitro- 
toluol. The  guns  can  be  hauled  over  open  country  and  are 
superior  to  any  field  gun  in  the  world,  so  far  as  is  known  in 
this  country. 


136  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

CATERPILLAR  TRACTORS 

Although  the  development  of  the  self-propelled  mount  cut 
no  figure  in  the  ordnance  production  statistics  of  1918,  in 
another  respect,  by  taking  an  intermediate  step  between  the 
artiller}'  which  is  drawn  by  horses  and  that  in  which  the  guns 
are  completely  self-contained,  the  Ordnance  Department  made 
great  progress.  This  was  in  the  production  of  caterpillar 
tractors  for  dragging  guns,  limbers,  and  caissons,  in  substitu- 
tion for  the  teams  of  artillery  horses  which  have  been  so  spir- 
ited a  feature  of  battle  scenes  of  the  past.  Perhaps  the  chief 
lesson  taught  the  Army  in  the  campaign  of  the  Punitive  Expe- 
dition into  Mexico  was  the  need  for  the  motorization  of  our 
artillery  and  supply  wagons.  Ordnance  officers  who  witnessed 
or  read  reports  of  the  toil  and  exhaustion  of  the  horses  which 
hauled  heavy  guns  over  the  northern  Mexican  desert  began 
experimenting  at  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal;  and  when  we  de- 
clared war  against  Germany  they  had  made  considerable 
progress  with  special  designs  for  caterpillar  tractors. 

Machines  of  five  sizes  were  required,  with  capacities  re- 
spectively of  2^/2,  5,  10,  15,  and  20  tons.  The  three  smaller 
sizes  had  to  be  designed  especially  for  the  Army  and  after- 
wards put  in  production,  but  the  Ordnance  Department  found 
commercial  15-ton  and  20-ton  tractor  engines  of  the  combi- 
nation caterpillar  and  wheeled  type  which,  after  some  slight 
changes  in  design,  would  serve  our  purposes. 

Nearly  25,000  caterpillar  tractors  of  these  five  types  were 
ordered,  six  manufacturers  participating  in  the  contracts — the 
Holt  Manufacturing  Company,  of  Peoria,  Illinois  (holder  of 
the  patents  on  the  caterpillar  traction  device),  the  Chandler 
Motor  Car  Company,  of  Cleveland,  Ohio,  the  Reo  Motor  Car 
Company,  of  Lansing,  Michigan,  the  Maxwell  Motor  Car 
Company  and  the  Federal  Motor  Truck  Company,  both  of 
Detroit,  Michigan,  and  the  Interstate  Motor  Company,  of 
Indianapolis,  Indiana.  The  smaller  specially  designed  tractors 
were  ordered  the  more  numerously,  the  order  for  5-ton  tractors 
comprising  in  number  nearly  half  the  entire  project.  Nearly 
2,500  artillery  tractors  came  from  the  factories  before   the 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY  137 

armistice,  and  considerably  more  than  half  this  output  crossed 
to  France,  in  spite  of  the  limitations  of  ship  space. 

In  line  with  the  development  of  the  self-propelled  gun 
mounts  came  the  designing  of  special  caterpillar  caissons  and 
ammunition  carriers  for  use  in  the  rough  country  where  shell- 
ing had  destroyed  the  roads.  Caterpillar  fuel  carriers  for  the 
motors  of  the  self-propelled  artillery  units  were  also  required. 
The  production  of  two  sizes  of  these  vehicles  was  about  to 
start  when  the  armistice  halted  the  enterprise. 

TRUCKS 

In  its  field  supply  service  the  Army  needed  automotive 
vehicles  of  three  distinct  types.  As  we  have  seen,  for  use  on  the 
shelled  terrain  of  the  actual  front  the  Ordnance  Department 
adopted  the  caterpillar  tractor,  which  could  go  anywhere  that 
horses  could  go  and  could  even  negotiate  country  too  rough 
for  the  pliant  animal  power.  Behind  that  was  an  area  which 
was  not  under  daily  fire,  but  in  which  the  activities  of  war 
had  cut  and  hacked  the  roads  and  made  them  practically  im- 
passable by  ordinary  motor  vehicles.  Still  farther  back  the 
roads  were  in  good  repair  and  suitable  for  traffic  of  all  sorts. 

The  caterpillar,  of  course,  could  travel  almost  equally  well 
in  any  of  the  three  areas;  but  the  disadvantage  of  the  cater- 
pillar is  its  snail-like  speed..  The  Army  therefore  adopted  vehi- 
cles that  could  make  the  best  of  any  terrain — caterpillars  for 
the  battle  front,  swift,  powerful  motor  trucks  of  the  common 
commercial  types  for  the  good  roads  of  the  back  zones,  and 
for  the  intermediate  area,  the  ground  in  which  the  roads  were 
difficult,  the  four-wheel-drive  truck,  usually  called  by  its 
initials,  the  f.  w.  d.  truck. 

As  the  name  indicates,  the  f.  w.  d.  truck  is  one  in  which  the 
engine  is  coupled  up  to  all  four  wheels  and  exerts  driving 
power  upon  all  of  them.  The  result  is  increased  traction  effi- 
ciency. The  commercial  truck  commonly  seen  on  city  streets 
or  country  roads  is  driven  by  the  rear  wheels  only.  If  these 
become  mired,  the  truck  is  helpless.  The  f.  w.  d.  truck,  with 
all  its  wheels  taking  purchase  on  the  ground,  can  scramble 


138  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

with  surprising  agility  out  of  situations  that  would  stall  a 
truck  of  less  traction  power.  The  Ordnance  Department 
adopted  this  truck  as  its  chief  supply  vehicle  and  became  a 
heavy  purchaser  of  it.*  The  armistice  found  the  Department 
designing  an  f.  w.  d.  truck  which  was  standardized. 

Five  of  every  six  ordnance  trucks  were  used  for  hauling 
ammunition.  For  this  purpose  special  bodies  were  designed 
and  built.  A  few  were  equipped  with  special  bodies  for  carry- 
ing machine  guns  and  trench  mortars.  Practically  all  the  rest 
were  designed  for  use  as  field  repair  shops  at  which  emergency 
repairs  to  the  artillery  could  be  made  and  other  field  ordnance 
could  be  reconditioned. 

The  ordnance  truck  program  was  a  large  one.  It  required 
much  work  in  designing,  especially  in  designing  the  specialized 
truck  bodies.  Yet  the  production  of  ordnance  trucks  and 
bodies  was  great,  handled  as  it  was  by  the  extensive  motor- 
truck manufacturing  industry  of  the  United  States.  Over 
9,000  ordnance  trucks  were  sent  to  the  A.  E.  F.  before  the 
armistice. 

The  Ordnance  Department  also  supplied  staff  observation 
cars  and  reconnaissance  cars  to  the  A.  E.  F.  These,  although 
they  had  the  appearance  of  passenger  automobiles,  were  in 
reality  trucks.  The  observation  car  consisted  of  a  touring  car 
body  mounted  on  a  i-ton  White  truck  chassis.  The  reconnais- 
sance car  body  was  mounted  on  a  Commerce  truck  chassis. 
Most  of  these  special  cars  were  produced  ahead  of  the  armi- 
stice, and  over  500  of  the  2,250  ordered  were  shipped  to 
France. 

In  all,  some  30,000  f.  w.  d.  ordnance  trucks  were  ordered, 
and  nearly  half  of  them  were  delivered  to  the  Army  before  the 
armistice.  The  plan  followed  by  the  Ordnance  Department 
was  to  order  chassis  only  from  the  truck  builders  and  procure 
the  specially  designed  bodies  from  concerns  equipped  to  build 
them.  The  companies  named  below  were  the  ordnance  truck 
builders: 

*  The  ordnance  trucks  are   not  to  be  confused  with   the  standardized  truck 
of  the  Quartermaster  Service,  about  which  something  is  to  be  said  later  on. 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY  139 

Nash  Motors  Co.,  Kenosha,  Wisconsin. 

Four- Wheel-Drive  Auto  Company,   Clintonville,  Wisconsin. 

Mitchell  Motor  Car  Company,  Racine,  Wisconsin. 

Premier  Motor  Corporation,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 

Kissel  Motor  Car  Company,   Hartford,  Wisconsin. 

Hudson  Motor  Car  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

National  Motor  Car  Company,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 

Paige  Motor  Car  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

Commerce  Motor  Car  Corporation,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

White  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 

Dodge  Motor  Car  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

The  builders  of  ordnance  truck  bodies  were  as  follows : 

American  Car  &  Foundry  Company,  Berwick,  Pennsylvania. 

J.  G.  Brill  Co.,  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania. 

Hale  &  Kilburn  Corporation,   Philadelphia,   Pennsylvania. 

Dunbar  Manufacturing  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois. 

Pullman  Company,  Pullman,  Illinois. 

Kuhlman  Car  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 

C.  R.  Wilson  Body  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

Insley  Manufacturing  Company,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 

Lang  Body  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio. 

Heil  Company,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin. 

Variety  Manufacturing  Company,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 

J.  E.  Bolles  Iron  &  Wire  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan. 

TRAILERS 

One  novelty  in  the  ordnance  motorization  program  was  the 
development  of  the  trailer.  The  trailer  was  in  reality  a  four- 
wheeled  freight  car  of  the  highways,  used  coupled  to  a  truck 
which  served  as  its  locomotive  for  swift  transport  of  field 
guns  and  other  heavy  ordnance.  Its  principal  use  was  in  carry- 
ing anti-aircraft  artillery,  quick  concentrations  of  such  weapons 
being  required  by  the  conditions  of  aerial  warfare.  Although 
the  75-millimeter  gun  rolls  on  its  own  wheels,  its  carriage  is 
at  best  a  lumbering  vehicle.  The  designers  produced  a  3-ton 
trailer  on  which  the  gun  and  its  limber  and  caissons  could 
ride  when  it  needed  rapid  transportation.  One  trailer  would 
hold  the  gun  carriage  and  limber,  and  another  two  caissons. 


140  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  chassis  of  a  4-ton  trailer  was  used  as  the  mounting  for  a 
mobile  repair  shop  body. 

Not  the  least  interesting  feature  of  the  trailer  program  was 
the  1  o-ton  trailer  used  for  the  road  transportation  of  the  6-ton 
Renault  tank  adopted  by  us  from  the  French,  By  the  use  of 
trailers  the  small  tanks  could  be  concentrated  rapidly  at  any 
point  along  the  front  where  a  drive  was  to  start. 

The  trailers  built  were  of  five  types:  a  i^^-ton  and  a  3-ton 
trailer  for  the  anti-aircraft  guns,  the  3-ton  trailer  for  the  75- 
millimeter  field  gun,  the  4-ton  trailer  for  the  mobile  repair 
shops,  and  the  10-ton  tank  trailer.  All  these  vehicles  were 
produced  to  meet  war  conditions  as  they  existed  in  France, 
and  therefore  they  required  individual  study  and  special  de- 
sign, with  what  that  implies  of  special  machinery  for  the  manu- 
facturing plants.  Yet  the  production  was  large,  over  1,000 
being  delivered  to  the  Ordnance  Department  before  November 
11,  1918.  Of  these,  about  350  were  shipped  to  the  A.  E.  F. 
The  trailer  builders  were  Sechler  &  Company  and  the  Trail- 
mobile  Company,  both  of  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  and  the  Ohio 
Trailer  Company  and  the  Grant  Motor  Car  Corporation,  both 
of  Cleveland. 

The  officers  of  the  Allies  were  loud  in  their  praises  of  Ameri- 
can artillery  motorization;  particularly,  they  applauded  our 
equipment  of  artillery  repair  trucks,  proclaiming  it  the  best 
in  use  in  Europe.  The  complete  motorization  project  was  rep- 
resented by  3,000  contracts  placed  by  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, involving  an  expenditure  of  $365,000,000. 


MOTORIZED  ARTILLERY 


141 


Production 

of  Ordnance  Motor  Vehicles 

TRACTORS 

Quantity 

Quantity 

accepted 

accepted 

Floated  to 

Quantity 

Nov.  II, 

Jan.  31, 

Nov.  II, 

Size 

ordered 

1918 

1919 

1918 

2i^-ton 

5,586 

10 

25 

2 

5-ton 

11,150 

1,543 

3,480 

459 

10-ton 

6,623 

1,421 

2,014 

628 

15-ton 

267 

267 

267 

232 

20-ton 

1,165 

126 

154 

81 

TRAILERS 

iJ/^-ton   anti-aircraft   ma 

. 

chine  gun 

2,289 

150 

562 

126 

3-inch  field  gun     . 

830 

235 

472 

15 

4-ton  shop  bodies  . 

576 

101 

384 

12 

4-ton  shop  chassis 

576 

260 

sss 

10-ton 

540 

104 

245 

1 

3-inch  anti-aircraft     . 

612 

543 

611 

199 

TRUCKS 

F.  W.  D.  chassis  .     . 

13,907 

5,361 

10,615 

3,561 

Nash  chassis     . 

16,165 

7,137 

12,884 

5,859 

Ammunition  bodies    . 

24,729 

18,212 

21,709 

Ammunition  mountings 

24,729 

9,615 

11,024 

6,955 

Artillery  repair 

1,332 

1,318 

1,332 

350 

Artillery  supply    . 

5,474 

813 

1,838 

444 

Light  repair      .      .      . 

1,012 

1,012 

1,012 

362 

Dodge  chassis  . 

1,012 

1,012 

1,012 

436 

Commerce  chassis 

1,500 

1,500 

1,500 

24 

Machine    gun    body 

, 

mounted  on  Commerc< 

or  White   i-ton  chassi 

5              I  sCOO 

486 

1,306 

241 

1-ton  supply      .      .      . 

60 

60 

60 

55 

White  chassis   . 

2,695 

1,929 

2,695 

515 

Reconnaissance 

1,081 

712 

1,003 

320 

Staff  observation    . 

1,175 

1,164 

1,175 

189 

Equipment  repair 

310 

310 

310 

121 

H.  M.  R.  S.  trucks      .     . 

624 

287 

416 

12 

CHAPTER  VII 

SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS 

A  T  the  threshold  of  the  war  with  Germany  we  were  con- 
J-\  fronted  with  the  problem  of  providing  on  a  large 
Jl  ^  scale  those  instruments  of  precision  with  which  mod- 
ern artillerists  point  their  weapons.  As  mysterious  to  the  aver- 
age man  as  the  sextant  and  other  instruments  which  help  the 
navigator  to  bring  his  ship  unerringly  to  port  over  leagues  of 
pathless  water,  or  as  those  devices  with  which  the  surveyor 
strikes  a  level  through  a  range  of  mountains,  are  the  instru- 
ments which  enable  the  gunner  to  drop  a  heavy  projectile 
exactly  on  his  target  without  seeing  it  at  all. 

The  old  days  of  sighting  a  cannon  point-blank  at  the  visible 
enemy  over  the  open  sights  on  the  barrel  passed  with  the  Civil 
War.  As  the  power  of  guns  increased  and  their  ranges  length- 
ened, artillerists  began  firing  at  objects  actually  below  the 
horizon  or  hidden  by  intervening  obstacles.  These  conditions 
necessarily  brought  in  the  method  of  mathematical  aim  which 
is  known  as  indirect  fire. 

In  the  World  War  indirect  firing  was  so  perfected  that, 
within  a  few  seconds  after  an  aviator  or  an  observer  in  a  cap- 
tive balloon  had  definitely  located  an  enemy  battery,  that 
battery  was  deluged  with  an  avalanche  of  high-explosive  shell 
and  destroyed,  even  though  the  attacking  gunners  were  several 
miles  away  and  hills  and  forests  intervened  to  obscure  the 
target  from  view.  With  the  aid  of  correlated  maps  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  battery  gunners  and  the  aerial  observer,  a  mere 
whisper  of  the  wireless  sufficed  to  turn  a  torrent  of  shell  pre- 
cisely upon  the  enemy  position  which  had  just  been  discovered. 
So  accurate  had  indirect  artillery  fire  become  that  a  steel  wall 
of  missiles  could  be  laid  down  a  few  yards  ahead  of  a  body  of 
troops  advancing  on  a  broad  front,  and  this  wall  could  be  kept 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Depat tmciit 


5-TON  ARTILLERY  TRACTOR 


Photo  from  Ordnance  Department 

20-TON  ARTILLERY  TRACTOR 


Photo  from  Recording  i3  Computing  Machines   Company 

GRINDING  LENSES  AND  PRISMS 


Photo  from  Penn    J  .  .    ' 

MANUFACTURING  TRENCH  PERISCOPES 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    143 

moving  steadily  ahead  of  the  soldiers  at  a  walking  pace,  with 
few  accidents  due  to  inaccurate  control  of  the  guns  firing  the 
barrage. 

The  chief  difference  between  the  old  and  the  new  methods 
of  artillery  practice  is  the  degree  of  precision  attained.  At  the 
time  of  the  Civil  War  the  artillery  was  fired,  by  comparison, 
blindly,  reliance  being  placed  upon  the  weight  of  the  fire,  re- 
gardless of  its  accuracy  and  its  effectiveness ;  but  modern  artil- 
lery has  recognized  the  importance  of  the  well-placed  shot  and 
demands  instruments  that  must  be  marvels  of  accuracy,  since  a 
slight  error  in  the  aiming  at  modern  ranges  means  a  miss  and 
the  total  loss  of  the  shot.  Such  uncanny  accuracy  is  made  pos- 
sible by  the  use  of  those  instruments  of  precision  known  as  fire- 
control  apparatus.  The  gunner  who  is  not  equipped  with  proper 
fire-control  instruments  can  not  aim  correctly  and  is  placed  at 
a  serious  disadvantage  in  the  presence  of  the  enemy.  These 
instruments  must  not  only  be  as  exact  as  a  chronometer,  but 
they  must  also  be  sufficiently  rugged  to  withstand  the  concus- 
sion of  close  artillery  fire. 

The  equipment  classified  under  the  designation  "Sights  and 
fire-control  apparatus"  comprises  all  devices  to  direct  the  fire 
of  offensive  weapons  and  to  observe  the  effect  of  this  fire  in 
order  to  place  it  on  the  target.  Included  in  this  list  are  instru- 
ments akin  to  those  used  in  surveying,  which  serve  to  locate  the 
relative  position  of  the  target  on  the  field  of  battle  and  to 
determine  its  range.  For  this  purpose  the  artillery  officer  uses 
aiming  circles,  azimuth  instruments,  battery  commander  tele- 
scopes, prismatic  compasses,  plotting  boards,  and  other  instru- 
ments. Telescopes  and  field  glasses  equipped  with  measuring 
scales  are  also  employed  in  making  observations. 

Instruments  of  a  second  group  are  attached  directly  to  the 
gun,  to  train  it  both  horizontally  and  vertically  in  the  direc- 
tions given  by  the  battery  commander.  These  devices  include 
sights  of  different  types,  elevation  quadrants,  clinometers,  and 
other  instruments.  The  intricate  panoramic  sight,  which  is 
used  especially  in  firing  at  an  unseen  target,  is  one  of  the  most 
important  instruments  of  this  group. 


144  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Still  another  set  of  instruments  comprises  devices  such  as 
range  deflection  boards,  deviation  boards,  and  wind  indicators, 
which,  together  with  range  tables  and  other  tables,  assist  the 
battery  commander  to  ascertain  the  path  of  the  projectile  under 
any  condition  of  range,  altitude,  air  pressure,  temperature, 
and  other  physical  influences.  When  it  is  understood  that  the 
projectile  fired  by  such  a  weapon  as  the  German  long-range 
gun  which  bombarded  Paris  at  a  distance  of  seventy  miles 
mounts  so  high  into  the  air  that  it  passes  into  the  highly  rare- 
fied layers  of  the  air  envelope  surrounding  the  earth,  and  hence 
into  entirely  diflterent  conditions  of  air  pressure,  it  can  be 
realized  how  abstruse  these  range  calculations  are  and  how 
many  factors  must  be  taken  into  account.  The  fire-control 
equipment  enables  the  artilleryman  to  make  these  computa- 
tions quickly. 

In  addition  to  the  above  items,  many  auxiliary  devices  are 
needed  by  the  artillery,  notable  among  these  being  the  self- 
luminous  aiming  posts  and  other  arrangements  which  enable 
the  gunners  to  maintain  accuracy  of  fire  at  night.  This  whole 
elaborate  set  of  instruments  is  supplied  to  the  field  and  rail- 
way artillery  and  in  part  to  trench-mortar  batteries  and  even 
to  machine  guns,  which  during  the  later  months  of  the  war 
were  used  in  indirect  firing. 

Still  another  group  of  pointing  instruments  is  used  by  anti- 
aircraft guns  against  hostile  aircraft,  to  ascertain  their  alti- 
tude, their  speed,  and  their  future  location,  in  order  that  pro- 
jectiles fired  by  the  anti-aircraft  guns  may  hit  these  high  and 
rapidly  moving  targets.  Sights  are  also  used  on  the  airplanes 
themselves  to  aid  the  pilot  and  the  observer  in  the  dropping 
of  bombs  and  in  gunfire  against  enemy  planes  or  targets.  Bomb 
sights  of  one  improved  type  correct  automatically  for  the  speed 
and  direction  of  the  airplane.  Fuse  setters,  which  enable  the 
gunner  to  time  the  fuse  in  the  shell  so  that  the  projectile,  mov- 
ing with  enormous  speed,  explodes  at  precisely  the  desired 
point,  were  required  in  large  numbers. 

The  responsibility  for  the  design,  procurement,  production, 
inspection,  and  supply  of  all  this  equipment  to  the  American 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    145 

Expeditionary  Forces  was  lodged  in  the  Ordnance  Department. 
The  effectiveness  of  the  artillery  on  the  field  of  battle  depended 
directly  on  the  fire-control  equipment  furnished  by  this  bureau. 

The  optical  industry  in  this  country  before  the  war  had  been 
in  the  hands  of  a  few  firms.  Several  of  these  were  under  Ger- 
man influence,  and  one  firm  was  directly  affiliated  with  the 
Carl  Zeiss  Works,  of  Jena,  Germany.  In  all  of  them  the  work- 
men were  largely  Germans  or  of  German  origin ;  the  kinds  and 
designs  of  apparatus  produced  were  for  the  most  part  essen- 
tially European;  and  the  optical  glass  used  was  procured 
entirely  abroad  and  chiefly  from  Germany.  It  had  been  easier 
and  cheaper  for  manufacturers  to  order  the  glass  from  abroad 
than  to  develop  its  manufacture  in  this  country.  Educational 
and  research  institutions  obtained  a  large  part  of  their  equip- 
ment from  Germany,  and  they  offered  no  special  inducement  to 
American  manufacturers  to  provide  such  apparatus.  Duty-free 
importation  favored  and  encouraged  this  dependence  on  Ger- 
many for  scientific  apparatus. 

When  the  World  War  began,  in  1914,  the  European  sources 
of  supply  for  optical  glass  and  optical  instruments  were  cut  off 
abruptly,  and  we  were  brought  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of 
furnishing  these  items  to  the  Army  and  Navy  out  of  our  own 
resources.  Prior  to  1917  only  three  or  four  private  manufac- 
turers in  the  United  States  had  built  fire-control  apparatus  in 
any  quantity  for  the  Government.  The  Bausch  &  Lomb  Optical 
Company,  Rochester,  New  York,  had  made  range  finders  and 
field  glasses  for  the  artillery  and  infantry,  and  gun  sights, 
range  finders,  and  spyglasses  and  field  glasses  for  the  Navy; 
the  Keuffel  &  Esser  Company,  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  had  pro- 
duced some  fire-control  equipment  for  the  Navy;  the  Warner 
&  Swasey  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio,  with  J.  A.  Brashear, 
Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  had  furnished  depression-position 
finders,  azimuth  instruments,  and  telescopic  musket  sights  to 
the  Army.  The  only  other  source  of  supply  in  this  country  had 
been  the  Frankford  Arsenal.  The  largest  order  for  fire-control 
equipment  which  our  Army  had  ever  placed  in  a  single  year 
before  1917  amounted  to  $1,202,000.  The  total  orders  for  such 


146  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

instruments  placed  by  theOrdnance  Department  alone  during 
the  nineteen  months  of  war  exceeded  $50,000,000,  and  the 
total  orders  for  fire-control  apparatus  placed  by  the  Army  and 
Navy  exceeded  $100,000,000. 

To  meet  the  situation,  existing  facilities  had  to  be  increased, 
new  facilities  developed,  and  similar  industries  converted  to 
the  production  of  fire-control  material.  Quantity  production 
had  to  be  secured  through  the  assembling  of  standardized  parts 
of  instruments  which  before  that  day  had  either  never  been 
built  in  this  country  or  built  in  only  a  small,  experimental  way. 
A  large  part  of  the  work  had  of  necessity  to  be  done  by 
machines  operated  by  relatively  unskilled  labor.  The  manu- 
facturing tolerances  had  to  be  nicely  adjusted  among  the  dif- 
ferent parts  of  each  instrument,  so  that  wherever  less  precise 
work  would  answer  the  purpose,  the  production  methods  could 
be  arranged  accordingly.  Only  by  a  careful  coordination  of 
design,  factory  operations,  and  field  performance  could  quan- 
tity production  of  the  desired  quality  be  obtained  in  a  short 
time.  Speed  of  production  meant  everything  if  our  troops  in 
the  field  were  to  be  equipped  with  the  necessary  fire-control 
apparatus  and  thus  be  enabled  to  meet  the  enemy  on  even 
approximately  equal  terms. 

To  accomplish  this  object,  a  competent  personnel  within  the 
Army  had  to  be  organized  and  developed;  the  army  require- 
ments had  to  be  carefully  scrutinized  and  coordinated  with 
reference  to  their  relative  urgency;  manufacturers  had  to  be 
encouraged  to  undertake  new  tasks  and  to  be  impressed  with 
the  necessity  for  whole-hearted  cooperation  and  with  the  im- 
portance of  their  part  in  the  war;  raw  materials  had  to  be 
secured  and  their  transportation  assured.  These  and  other 
factors  were  faced  and  overcome.  Although  American  fire-con- 
trol instruments  did  not  reach  the  front  in  as  large  numbers 
as  were  wanted,  great  quantities  were  got  under  way,  and  we 
attained  in  the  manufacturing  program  a  basic  stage  of  prog- 
ress which  would  have  cared  for  all  our  needs  in  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1919. 

Incidentally   the   enterprise   developed   in    this   country   a 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    147 

manufacturing  capacity  for  precision  optical  and  instrument 
work,  which  rendered  us  potentially  independent  of  foreign 
markets.  At  the  armistice  there  existed  in  this  country  a 
trained  personnel  and  adequate  organization  for  the  produc- 
tion of  optical  instruments  of  precision  greatly  in  excess  of 
the  needs  of  the  country.  One  of  the  problems  of  the  demobili- 
zation was  the  diversion  of  this  development,  brought  about 
by  war-time  conditions,  into  channels  of  peace-time  activity. 

In  April,  1917,  the  most  serious  problem  in  the  situation 
was  the  manufacture  of  optical  glass.  Before  1914  practically 
all  the  optical  glass  used  in  the  United  States  had  been  im- 
ported from  abroad.  Our  manufacturers,  following  the  line  of 
least  resistance,  preferred  to  procure  certain  commodities,  such 
as  optical  glass,  chemical  dyes,  and  other  materials  difficult  to 
produce,  direct  from  Europe  instead  of  undertaking  their 
manufacture  here.  The  war  stopped  this  source  of  supply 
abruptly,  and  in  1915  experiments  in  the  making  of  optical 
glass  were  under  way  at  five  different  plants — the  Bausch  & 
Lomb  Optical  Company,  at  Rochester,  New  York;  the  Bureau 
of  Standards,  at  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania;  the  Keuffel  &  Esser 
Company,  at  Hoboken,  New  Jersey;  the  Pittsburg  Plate  Glass 
Company,  at  Charleroi,  Pennsylvania;  and  the  Spencer  Lens 
Company,  at  Buffalo,  New  York.  By  April,  1917,  the  situa- 
tion had  become  acute;  some  optical  glass  of  fair  quality 
had  been  produced,  but  nowhere  had  its  manufacture  been 
placed  on  an  assured  basis.  The  glass-making  processes  were 
not  adequately  known.  Without  optical  glass,  fire-control 
instruments  could  not  be  produced;  optical  glass  is  a  thing  of 
high  precision,  and  in  its  manufacture  accurate  control  is  re- 
quired throughout  the  factory  processes. 

In  this  emergency  the  Government  appealed  for  assistance  to 
the  Geophysical  Laboratory  of  the  Carnegie  Institution  of 
Washington.  This  laborator}^  had  been  engaged  for  many  years 
in  the  study  of  solution — such  as  that  of  optical  glass — in  high 
temperatures,  and  it  had  a  corps  of  scientists  trained  in  the  sort 
of  technique  which  is  essential  to  the  successful  production 
of  optical  glass.  It  was  the  only  organization  in  the  country 


148  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

with  a  personnel  competent  to  undertake  a  manufacturing 
problem  of  this  intensiveness  and  magnitude.  Accordingly,  in 
April,  1917,  a  group  of  its  scientists  was  placed  at  the  Bausch 
&  Lomb  Optical  Company  and  given  virtual  charge  of  the 
plant;  its  men  were  assigned  to  the  different  factory  operations 
and  made  responsible  for  them.  By  November,  1917,  the  manu- 
facturing processes  at  this  plant  had  been  mastered,  and  large 
quantities  of  optical  glass  of  good  quality  were  being  produced. 
In  December,  1917,  the  work  was  extended,  men  from  the 
Geophysical  Laboratory  taking  practical  charge  of  the  plants 
of  the  Spencer  Lens  Company  and  of  the  Pittsburg  Plate 
Glass  Company.  The  cost  to  the  Geophysical  Laboratory  of 
solving  the  optical  glass  problem  amounted  to  about  $200,- 
000,  but  the  results  attained  surely  more  than  justified  this 
expenditure. 

The  results  could  not  have  been  obtained,  however,  without 
the  hearty  cooperation  of  the  manufacturers  and  of  the  Army 
and  Navy,  which  assisted  in  the  procurement  and  transporta- 
tion of  the  raw  materials.  An  ordnance  officer  was  in  charge 
of  the  Rochester  party  from  the  Geophysical  Laboratory,  and 
he  was  responsible  for  much  of  the  pioneer  development  work 
accomplished  there.  It  was  at  this  plant,  that  of  the  Bausch  & 
Lomb  Optical  Company,  at  Rochester,  that  the  methods  of 
manufacture  were  first  developed  and  placed  on  a  production 
basis.  The  Bureau  of  Standards  aided  in  the  development  of 
a  chemically  and  thermally  resistant  crucible  in  which  to  melt 
optical  glass ;  also  in  the  testing  of  optical  glass,  and  especially 
in  the  testing  of  optical  instruments.  The  Geological  Survey 
aided  in  locating  sources  of  raw  materials,  such  as  sand  of 
adequate  chemical  purity. 

By  February,  1918,  the  supply  of  optical  glass  was  assured; 
but  the  manufacture  of  optical  instruments  was  so  seriously 
behind  schedule  that  the  Military  Optical  Glass  and  Instru- 
ment Section  was  formed  in  the  War  Industries  Board  to  take 
charge  of  the  optical  instrument  industry  of  the  country. 
Through  the  efforts  of  its  chief,  Mr.  George  E.  Chatillon,  of 
New  York,  the  entire  industry  was  coordinated.  By  September, 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    149 

1918,  the  production  of  fire-control  instruments  in  sufficient 
quantities  to  meet  the  requirements  of  both  Army  and  Navy 
during  1919  was  believed  to  be  assured. 

To  the  accomplishment  of  this  result  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment contributed  most  effectively.  The  information  and  long 
experience  of  Frankford  Arsenal  in  instrument  manufacture 
and  in  the  work  of  optics  of  precision  were  placed  at  the  service 
of  contractors;  trained  officers  of  the  Ordnance  Department 
were  stationed  at  the  different  factories ;  and  in  many  factories 
these  officers  rendered  valuable  aid  in  devising  and  developing 
proper  and  adequate  factory  operations,  in  establishing  pro- 
duction on  a  satisfactory  basis,  in  securing  the  proper  inflow  of 
raw  materials,  in  devising  testing  fixtures,  in  establishing 
proper  manufacturing  tolerances,  and  in  testing  the  perform- 
ance of  the  assembled  instruments.  Schools  for  operatives  in 
precision  optics  were  established  at  Frankford  Arsenal,  Phila- 
delphia, Pennsylvania,  at  Rochester,  New  York,  and  at  Mount 
Wilson  Observatory,  Pasadena,  California.  To  many  con- 
tractors financial  aid  had  to  be  extended.  The  fire-control 
program  required,  in  short,  all  the  available  talent  and  re- 
sources of  the  country,  if  it  were  to  be  carried  to  a  successful 
finish. 

The  general  procedure  adopted  by  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment was  to  assign  the  more  difficult  instruments  to  manu- 
facturers who  had  had  experience  in  cognate  problems.  To 
others,  who  had  produced  articles  related  only  in  a  distant  way 
to  fire-control  instruments,  less  intricate  types  of  instruments 
were  awarded.  In  certain  instances  the  optical  elements  were 
produced  by  one  firm  and  the  mechanical  parts  by  another, 
the  final  assembly  of  the  instrument  being  then  accomplished 
by  the  latter. 

Because  our  Army  had  adopted  a  number  of  French  guns 
for  reproduction  here,  it  became  necessary  to  build  sights  for 
these  weapons  according  to  the  French  designs.  This  necessity 
gave  us  much  trouble,  not  only  because  of  the  delay  in  securing 
samples  and  drawings  from  France,  but  also  because  of  the 


150  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

difficulties  in  producing  articles  from  these  French  drawings 
by  American  methods  and  with  American  workmen. 

The  most  intricate  of  these  French  sights  was  the  Schneider 
quadrant  sight.  It  was  used  with  the  French  155-millimeter 
gun,  the  155-millimeter  howitzer,  and  the  240-millimeter 
howitzer.  The  structure  of  this  sight  was  highly  complicated, 
and  extreme  accuracy  was  required  at  every  stage  of  produc- 
tion. These  sights  were  put  into  production  by  the  Emerson 
Engineering  Company  of  Philadelphia,  the  Raymond  Engi- 
neering Company  of  New  York,  and  by  Slocum,  Avram  & 
Slocum  of  New  York.  The  design  of  this  sight  was  received 
from  France  early  in  1918.  It  was  the  1st  of  November — ten 
days  before  the  armistice  was  signed — when  the  first  Schneider 
sight  was  delivered  to  the  Army;  yet  at  all  times  the  progress 
made  had  been  as  rapid  as  could  be  expected.  A  total  of  7,000 
Schneider  quadrant  sights  was  ordered,  which  meant  a  year's 
work  for  1,000  men.  Of  this  order,  3,500  sights  were  to  be 
manufactured  by  Schneider  et  Cie.  in  France  and  the  rest 
by  the  three  firms  in  this  country.  On  November  1 1  the  Ameri- 
can factories  had  delivered  seventy-four  sights. 

The  amount  of  labor  involved  in  the  Schneider  quadrant 
sights  is  shown  by  the  fact  that,  whereas  the  raw  material  cost 
about  $25,  the  finished  sight  was  worth  about  $600.  In  order 
to  expedite  production  the  Government  extended  financial 
assistance  to  some  of  the  factories,  to  aid  in  the  procurement 
and  installation  of  additional  equipment.  On  November  1 1 
the  number  of  these  sights  completed  was  short  of  require- 
ments for  installation  on  completed  carriages  by  about  400, 
but  the  rate  of  progress  which  had  been  attained  in  production 
would  have  overtaken  the  output  of  gun  carriages  by  January 
1,   1919. 

Another  difficult  task  was  the  construction  of  telescopic 
sights  for  the  French  37-millimeter  guns,  the  "infantry  can- 
non" which  we  adopted  for  reproduction  in  this  country.  Here 
again  we  encountered  the  same  difficulty,  that  of  adapting 
French  plans  to  our  methods.  The  original  contract  was  placed 
with  a  firm  which  had  had  no  experience  with  optical  instru- 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    151 

ments  of  precision,  because  no  other  company  was  then  avail- 
able for  the  work.  By  May,  1918,  this  concern  had  produced 
only  a  few  sights.  The  contract  was  then  taken  from  it  and 
placed  with  a  subcontractor,  the  Central  Scientific  Company  of 
Chicago,  which  had  been  building  mechanical  parts  for  the 
sights.  In  this  plant  the  complete  force  had  to  be  educated  in 
the  art  before  any  production  could  begin.  When  the  armistice 
was  signed  the  factories  had  produced  826  guns,  but  only  142 
telescopic  sights  had  been  completed.  The  rate  of  production  of 
these  sights  by  the  Central  Scientific  Company  was  such,  how- 
ever, that  the  shortage  would  have  ceased  to  exist  shortly 
after  January  1,  1919. 

The  French  design  for  the  telescopic  sight  for  the  37-milli- 
meter gun  used  on  the  tanks  was  also  adopted  by  the  Army. 
Here  again  difficulty  was  experienced  in  manufacture,  but 
excellent  progress  was  made,  especially  by  one  firm, — Burke  & 
James  of  Chicago,  Illinois, — and  the  output  in  adequate  quan- 
tities was  assured  for  1919.  The  French  collimator  sight  for 
the  75-millimeter  gun  presented  difficulties  to  the  manufac- 
turer, especially  in  the  optical  parts.  These  were,  however, 
overcome  by  the  Globe  Optical  Company,  which  furnished  the 
optics  to  the  Electric  Auto-Lite  Corporation  and  to  the  Stand- 
ard Thermometer  Company  of  Boston.  By  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  the  production  of  these  sights  was  progressing  well. 

Periscopes  from  twenty  inches  to  nearly  twenty  feet  in 
length  were  produced  in  quantity.  These  periscopes  enabled  the 
men  in  the  front-line  trenches  to  look  over  the  top  with  com- 
parative safety.  The  long  periscopes  were  used  in  deep- 
shelter  trenches  and  bomb  proofs.  The  production  of  the  short- 
base  periscopes  and  also  of  the  battery  commander  periscopes 
by  the  Wollensak  Optical  Company,  Rochester,  New  York, 
and  of  the  3-meter  and  6-mxeter  periscope  by  the  Andrew  J. 
Lloyd  Company  of  Boston,  Massachusetts,  was  progressing 
at  such  a  rate  that  the  needs  of  the  Army  for  1919  would  have 
been  met  on  time. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  policy  followed  by  the  Ord- 
nance Department  was  to  place  orders  for  standard  fire-control 


152  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

apparatus,  such  as  range  finders  of  different  base  lengths,  bat- 
tery commander  telescopes,  aiming  circles,  panoramic  sights, 
musket  sights,  and  prismatic  compasses,  with  firms  of  estab- 
lished reputation  and  experience.  When  requests  from  the 
Army  in  France  came  for  instruments  of  new  design,  new 
sources  of  manufacture  had  to  be  sought  and  new  organizations 
educated  in  the  methods  of  precision  optics.  Such  a  procedure 
necessarily  caused  delay,  but  it  was  the  only  course  of  action 
left.  Wherever  possible,  part  of  the  total  contract  was  awarded 
to  an  experienced  manufacturer,  so  that  some  minimum  of 
production  was  assured. 

The  records  show  that  the  experienced  manufacturers  over- 
came the  difficulties  encountered  and  in  general  attained  a 
rate  of  output  which  was  satisfactory  at  the  time  of  the  sign- 
ing of  the  armistice.  For  example,  the  Bausch  &  Lomb  Optical 
Company  delivered  large  numbers  of  range  finders  of  base 
lengths  of  eighty  centimeters,  one  meter,  and  fifteen  feet,  and 
battery  commander  telescopes;  Keuffel  &  Esser  made  many 
prismatic  compasses  and  a  few  range  finders ;  the  Spencer  Lens 
Company  produced  aiming  circles  in  quantity;  the  Warner 
&  Swasey  Company,  with  J.  A.  Brashear  of  Pittsburg,  fur- 
nished large  numbers  of  the  valuable  panoramic  sights  with 
which  much  of  the  artillery  fire  is  directed.  Credit  is  due  the 
above  organizations  for  the  efficient  manner  in  which  they 
placed  the  manufacture  of  these  items  on  a  high-speed  pro- 
duction basis.  Frankford  Arsenal  proved  to  be  a  most  reliable 
source  of  supply  for  battery  commander  telescopes,  panoramic 
sights,  azimuth  instruments,  3-inch  telescopes,  plotting  boards, 
and  other  ordnance  fire-control  instruments. 

The  manufacture  of  many  other  types  of  instruments  was 
undertaken  in  this  country.  Among  these,  the  French  sitogo- 
niometer,  a  device  which  assists  the  battery  commander  in 
obtaining  data  for  the  direction  of  fire,  was  successfully  pro- 
duced by  the  Martin-Copeland  Company  of  Providence, 
Rhode  Island;  quadrant  sights  for  the  37-millimeter  gun  by 
the  Scientific  Materials  Company  of  Pittsburg;  lensatic  com- 
passes and  Brunton  compasses  were   furnished  by  William 


SIGHTS  AND  FIRE-CONTROL  APPARATUS    153 

Ainsworth  &  Sons  of  Denver,  Colorado;  prismatic  compasses 
by  the  Sperry  Gyroscope  Company  of  Brooklyn,  New  York; 
telescopes  for  sights  on  anti-aircraft  carriages  by  the  KoU- 
morgen  Optical  Corporation  of  Brooklyn;  altimeters,  gunners' 
quadrants,  elevation  quadrants,  and  aiming  stakes  by  the  J.  H. 
Deagan  Company  of  Chicago,  Illinois;  panoramic  telescopes 
and  fuse  setters  by  the  Recording  &  Computing  Machine 
Company  of  Dayton,  Ohio;  battery  commander  telescopes  by 
Arthur  Brock  of  Philadelphia;  and  tripods  for  fire-control 
instruments  by  the  National  Cash  Register  Company  of  Day- 
ton, Ohio.  Optics  for  different  sights  were  furnished  by  the 
American  Optical  Company  of  Southbridge,  Massachusetts, 
and  by  the  Mount  Wilson  Observatory  of  Pasadena,  Califor- 
nia. These  and  other  organizations  entered  into  the  task  and 
devoted  their  energy  to  the  production  of  equipment  desired 
by  the  Government. 

At  no  time  during  the  fighting  did  our  artillery  units  have 
a  sufficient  supply  of  fire-control  instruments.  The  shortage 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  we  were  not  able  to  secure  in  Europe 
the  amount  of  this  equipment  required  to  take  care  of  our 
needs  while  our  own  industry  was  being  developed.  With  an 
almost  total  lack  of  optical  glass  in  this  country,  with  an  equal 
lack  of  factories  and  workmen  familiar  with  military  optical 
instrument-making,  we  were  suddenly  called  upon  to  produce 
about  two  hundred  different  types  of  instruments  in  large 
quantities.  These  included  many  new  designs  of  fire-control 
apparatus  made  necessary  by  new  artillery  developments,  both 
among  the  Allies  and  in  our  own  factories,  by  the  adoption  of 
trench  warfare  in  place  of  open  warfare,  by  the  development 
of  weapons  for  use  against  aircraft,  by  the  extension  of  indirect 
fire-control  methods  to  weapons  which  formerly  had  been  fired 
by  direct  sighting,  and  by  the  use  of  railway  and  seacoast 
artillery.  Though  we  did  not  solve  all  the  difficulties  in  this 
development,  we  met  and  conquered  the  worst  of  them,  and 
we  were  making  such  great  strides  in  production  when  the 
war  ended  that  all  the  requirements  of  the  Army  would  have 
been  met  early  in  1919. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

EXPLOSIVES,  PROPELLANTS,  AND  ARTILLERY 
AMMUNITION 

THE  Interallied  Ordnance  Agreement  of  the  late  fall 
of  1917,  though  it  supplied  the  United  States  with 
French  and  British  artillery  and  other  heavy  ordnance 
supplies  until  the  developing  American  ordnance  industry 
could  come  into  production,  called  upon  the  United  States  to 
produce  heavily  the  explosives  and  propeliants  that  are  of 
such  major  importance  to  a  modem  army.  These  commodities 
were  needed  by  the  armies  of  France  and  Great  Britain  more 
than  any  other  sort  of  ordnance  which  America  could  supply. 
The  result  was  an  enormous  production  of  propeliants  and 
explosives  in  the  United  States  during  the  period  of  American 
belligerency.  No  other  prime  phase  of  the  ordnance  program 
was  carried  to  such  a  stage  of  development. 

The  reader  will  clearly  see  the  distinction  between  propel- 
iants and  explosives.  The  propellant  is  the  smokeless  powder 
that  sends  the  shell  or  bullet  from  the  gun;  the  explosive  is 
the  bursting  charge  within  the  shell. 

To  realize  the  expansion  of  the  American  explosives  indus- 
try during  the  war  period,  consider  such  figures  as  these: 
America  in  nineteen  months  turned  out  632,504,000  pounds 
of  propeliants — the  powder  loaded  into  small-arms  cartridges 
or  packed  into  the  big  guns  behind  the  projectiles.  In  those 
same  nineteen  months  France  produced  342,155,000  pounds  of 
propeliants  and  Great  Britain  291,706,000  pounds.  The 
American  production  was  practically  equal  to  that  of  England 
and  France  together. 

In  those  nineteen  months  we  produced  375,656,000  pounds 
of  high  explosives  for  loading  into  shell.  In  the  same  nineteen 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  155 

months  England  produced  765,1 10,000  pounds  of  high  explo- 
sives and  France  702,964,000  pounds.  America  was  below 
bodi  France  and  England  in  total  output,  but  in  monthly 
rate  of  output  America  had  reached  47,888,000  pounds,  as 
against  France's  22,802,000  pounds  and  England's  30,957,000 
pounds.  Our  rate  of  manufacturing  propellants  at  the  end  of 
the  fighting  had  risen  to  42,775,000  pounds,  as  against 
France's  17,311,000  and  England's  12,055,000. 


FIGURE  14 

Froduction  of  Smokeless  Powder  and  High  Explosives : 

France  and  United  States  Compared  with 

Great  Britain 


Average  Monthly  Rate,  August,  September,  and  October,  1918 

Smokeless  powder:      Pounds  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain         12,055,000  mmmmmi^m  100 

France  17,311,000  ^^^^^^■■■144 

United  States        42,755,000  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmami^^^^m?>S5 


High  explosives : 

Great  Britain  30,957,000 

France  22,802,000 

United  States  43,888,000    ^mimmmmmammmm  142 

Total  Production,  April  6,  1917,  to  November  11,  1918 

Smokeless  powder:      Pounds  Per  cent  of  rate  for  Great  Britain 

Great  Britain  291,706,000    ^^^mmmK^^ma^  100 

France  342,155,000    ^^mamammmm^^aB  wi 

United  States  632,504,000    ^^^m^i^mama^K^^mam^ma^^^^'2.1'] 

High  explosives : 

Great  Britain  765,1 10,000    ^amma^^mmmm^  100 

France  702,964,000    ^^^^i^mmamm  92 

United  States  375,656,000 


Figure  14  shows  graphically  the  achievement  of  America  in 
manufacturing  propellants  and  explosives. 

In  the  production  of  artillery  ammunition,  a  comparison 
with  France  and  Great  Britain  shows  that  our  monthly  rate 


156  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

in  turning  out  unfilled  rounds  of  ammunition  at  the  end  of 
the  war  was  7,044,000  rounds,  as  against  7,748,000  rounds 
for  Great  Britain  and  6,661,000  rounds  for  France.  In  pro- 
ducing complete  rounds  of  artillery  ammunition,  our  monthly- 
rate  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice  was  2,429,000  rounds;  that 
of  Great  Britain  was  7,347,000  rounds  and  that  of  France 
7,638,000  rounds.  In  the  nineteen  months  of  our  participa- 
tion in  the  war  our  production  of  unfilled  rounds  in  ammuni- 
tion was  38,623,000  rounds;  that  of  France  was  156,170,000 
rounds  and  that  of  Great  Britain  138,357,000  rounds.  In  that 
time  we  had  produced  17,260,000  complete  rounds;  France 
had  produced  149,827,000,  and  Great  Britain  121,739,000. 

The  explosives  industry  in  the  United  States,  which  had 
always  been  large,  experienced  a  tremendous  expansion  after 
1914  in  response  to  the  needs  of  the  Allies  for  ammunition; 
yet  this  growth  was  nothing  compared  to  what  the  industry 
was  to  know  after  America's  entrance  into  the  war  in  1917. 
Our  ordnance  people  found  an  industry  operating  at  full 
capacity  with  a  trained  personnel  all  too  small  for  the  work 
demanded  of  the  manufacturers  under  their  contracts  with  the 
Allies.  It  was  the  first  concern  in  the  Ordnance  Department  to 
thin  out  this  limited  force  of  experts  and  distribute  them 
among  the  new  plants  which  began  to  spring  up  almost  as  soon 
as  the  United  States  became  a  belligerent.  Then,  by  assign- 
ing chemists,  engineers,  and  other  specialists  from  the  technical 
callings  to  work  in  these  new  plants  under  the  direction  of  the 
men  already  trained  in  the  manufacture  of  explosives,  the  War 
Department  created  as  quickly  as  possible  a  vastly  enlarged 
force  of  competent  operators  and  supervisors  for  the  produc- 
tion of  these  most  necessary  commodities. 

Under  the  agreement  with  the  French  and  British,  not  only 
did  existing  war  production  for  export  have  to  be  kept  up,  but 
this  production  had  to  be  expanded ;  and,  outside  all  this  activ- 
ity, the  American  Government  had  to  build  up  an  industry  for 
the  production  of  explosives  for  its  own  army  uses.  Such  a 
program  meant,  of  course,  the  erection  of  many  entirely  new 
manufacturing  plants  and  the  creation  of  trained  forces  to 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  157 

operate  the  new  facilities.  In  addition  we  were  required  to 
bring  into  existence  huge  factories  for  loading  the  explosives 
into  shell,  into  cartridges,  and  into  bags.  In  all,  the  Govern- 
ment and  its  contractors  began  the  construction  of  fifty-three 
new  plants  in  the  ammunition  industry,  at  the  cost  of  approxi- 
mately $360,000,000.  A  great  part  of  this  new  capacity  was 
brought  into  operation  before  the  armistice  was  signed. 

RAW  MATERIALS 

In  the  decade  preceding  the  belligerency  of  the  United 
States  in  the  World  War,  our  Army,  for  both  its  mobile  and 
its  coast  artillery,  had  depended  upon  ammonium  picrate  as 
the  high  explosive  used  as  its  bursting  charge  in  shell.  In  the 
army  vernacular  this  was  called  Explosive  D.  A  highly  effi- 
cient commodity  was  Explosive  D,  and  one  with  which  the 
Army  was  satisfied  in  every  way ;  but  in  the  effort  to  obtain  the 
greatest  quantity  of  explosives  possible,  other  considerations 
than  the  one  of  supreme  merit  had  to  be  taken  into  account. 
During  the  war  we  loaded  shell  for  American  use  not  only 
with  ammonium  picrate,  but  also  with  two  other  high  explo- 
sives :  trinitrotoluol — T.  N.  T.,  as  it  is  commonly  called — and 
amatol. 

Amatol  was  a  British  development,  an  explosive  brought 
into  extensive  use  during  the  European  conflict.  It  is  a  mixture 
of  T.  N.  T.  and  ammonium  nitrate.  In  actual  service  on  the 
battle  field  it  proved  to  be  entirely  satisfactory  in  high-explo- 
sive shell.  T.  N.  T.,  itself  a  deadly  and  efficient  explosive,  was 
expensive  and  hard  to  obtain.  Ammonium  nitrate  could  be 
produced  here  in  large  quantities  at  the  war  chemical  factories 
then  springing  up.  Therefore,  to  conserve  T.  N.  T.  and  obtain 
the  greatest  possible  quantity  of  high  explosives  the  Ordnance 
Department  adopted  amatol  and  used  it  extensively  in  shell 
for  guns  of  medium  size. 

In  theory,  the  policy  of  the  Ordnance  Department  for  the 
use  of  high  explosives  came  to  be  as  follows : 

T.  N.  T.  for  shell  up  to  and  including  those  for  the  4.7-inch 
guns; 


158  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Amatol  for  shell  of  calibers  between  4.7-inch  and  9,5-inch, 

including  the  latter; 
Ammonium  picrate    (Explosive   D)    for  shell   of    10-inch 

caliber  and  larger. 

This  loading  scheme  was  followed,  not  always  rigidly,  but 
only  as  the  supplies  of  the  three  high  explosives  warranted. 
As  a  matter  of  record,  amatol  was  loaded  into  shell  of  all 
sizes,  and  so  was  T.  N.  T.,  but  Explosive  D  was  never  used 
in  shell  smaller  than  the  10-inch  size. 

In  building  up  the  war  explosives  supplies  our  first  concern 
was  to  arrange  for  the  production  of  immense  quantities  of 
T.  N.  T.  and  ammonium  nitrate.  It  was  soon  discovered  that 
the  War  Department  itself  would  have  to  foster  and  encour- 
age the  production  of  the  raw  materials  which  went  into  these 
and  other  explosives  used  in  army  ammunition.  Toluol, 
phenol,  caustic  soda,  sodium  nitrate,  sulphuric  acid,  nitric  acid, 
ammonia  liquor — these  chemicals  are  all  raw  materials  of  the 
explosive  industrv-;  and  it  was  necessary  for  the  Government 
greatly  to  increase  the  means  of  obtaining  all  of  them.  In  addi- 
tion we  faced  the  bugbear  of  a  possible  failure  of  the  cotton 
planters  to  provide  linters  in  sufficient  quantity  to  guarantee 
us  an  adequate  supply  of  cellulose,  a  chief  ingredient  of  smoke- 
less powder.  Hence  one  of  the  problems  of  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment was  to  work  experimentally  in  the  effort  to  produce  a 
substitute  for  cotton  in  the  production  of  cellulose.  We  had 
heard  for  years  that  the  Germans,  in  the  manufacture  of  smoke- 
less powder,  were  using  cellulose  produced  from  wood  pulp. 
Our  experimenters  worked  in  the  same  direction  to  produce  a 
wood  pulp  in  suitable  form  for  nitration.  It  was  the  expecta- 
tion that,  if  the  war  lasted  and  we  were  forced  to  this  substi- 
tute, we  should  find  our  wood  in  the  stumps  of  cut-over  timber 
lands  and  in  swamp  lands  of  the  South  and  Southwest.  The 
war  ended  before  we  were  forced  to  that  extremity. 

It  quickly  transpired  that  the  chief  of  the  problems  in  the 
supply  of  raw  materials  for  explosives  was  that  of  toluol. 
Toluol  is  the  basic  raw  material  from  which  T.  N.  T.  is  made. 


ARTILLERY  A^L^IUNITIOX  159 

T.  X.  T.  alone  and  amatol,  of  which  T.  X.  T.  is  a  principal 
component,  were  to  fill  all  the  shell  to  be  used  by  our  mobile 
artillery,  Explosive  D  (ammonium  picratej  being  fired  only  by 
the  railway  guns.  But  toluol  was  a  product  difficult  to  obtain. 
Before  1914  the  sole  source  of  toluol  in  the  United  States  had 
been  the  by-product  coke  ovens.  In  the  year  1914  American 
ovens  of  this  sort  could  produce  a  maximum  of  700,000  pounds 
of  toluol  a  month.  The  war  in  Europe  greatly  stimulated  the 
American  production  of  toluol ;  the  infant,  but  rapidly  grow- 
ing, dye  industry-  of  this  countn,'  added  its  demand  for  the  com- 
modity;  and  there  was  a  growing  tendency  in  the  L'nited  States 
toward  a  national  economy  that  no  longer  wasted  the  valuable 
by-products  of  industry.  These  three  factors  combined  to  in- 
crease the  use  of  by-produce  coke  ovens  in  the  L'nited  States,  so 
that  by  April,  1917,  the  domestic  capacity  for  the  production 
of  oven  toluol  had  increased  to  6.000,000  pounds  a  month.  The 
Ordnance  Department  succeeded  during  the  war  in  doubling 
this  rate,  raising  the  production  from  this  source  at  the  time  of 
the  armistice  to  about  12.000.000  pounds  a  month.  Simultane- 
ously the  average  price  declined  to  21  cents  a  pound  from  a 
price  which,  not  so  many  months  before,  had  been  as  high  as 
$1  a  pound. 

Yet  even  this  increased  production  did  little  more  than  meet 
the  immediate  needs,  and  the  attention  of  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment turned  to  consideration  of  the  supply  of  toluol  for 
1919  and  1920,  assuming  that  the  war  would  last  that  length 
of  time  and  that  the  American  militar\-  establishment  would 
reach  correspondingly  tremendous  size  and  consuming  capac- 
ity. By  piling  contracts  for  raw  toluol  upon  the  coke  com- 
panies, the  Department  warranted  the  latter  in  beginning  the 
construction  of  new  by-product  ovens  by  hundreds.  The  aug- 
mented supply  for  1919  was  guaranteed  by  new  oven  installa- 
tions providing  increased  output  as  shown  on  next  page. 

Here  was  additional  production,  to  start  in  1919,  that  would 
add  to  the  national  producing  capacity  over  18.000.000  pounds 
of  toluol  per  annum.  It  cost  the  manufacturers  about  $30,000,- 
000  to  install  these  additional  ovens.  For  1Q20  there  was  to  be 


i6o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


igig  Toluol  Augmentation 


Company  Capacity 


Pounds 

Jones    &    Laughlin    Steel    Company,    Pittsburg,    Penn-  per  year 

sylvania  .........  5,770,160 

The  Sloss-Sheffield  Company,  Birmingham,  Alabama      .  2,019,556 

United  States  Steel  Corporation,  Clairton,  Pennsylvania  2,308,064 

International  Harvester  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois         .  1,586,794 

United  States  Steel  Corporation,  Birmingham,  Alabama  2,019,556 

Rainey-Wood  Company,  Swedeland,  Pennsylvania          .  2,163,810 
The  Seaboard  By-Product  Company,  Jersey  City,  New 

Jersey      .........  1,081,905 

Pittsburg   Crucible   Steel   Company,   Midland,   Pennsyl- 
vania       .........  2,019,556 


a  further  augmentation  of  the  oven  toluol  supply,  for  in  the 
summer  of  1918  the  War  Department  arranged  for  the  con- 
struction of  320  additional  ovens  that,  coming  into  operation 
about  the  beginning  of  1920,  would  add  600,000  pounds  of 
toluol  a  month  to  the  supply.  The  1920  plant  increment  was  to 
be  as  follows : 


Estimated 

Date 

of 

Estimated 

time  of 

Company 

contract 

cost 

completion 

Donner  Steel  Company,  Buf- 

falo, New  York       .      .      . 

May, 

1918 

$6,000,000 

Mar., 

1920 

Birmingham  Coke  Company, 

Birmingham,  Alabama  . 

July, 

1918 

2,500,000 

Oct., 

1919 

Domestic   Coke   Corporation, 

Fairmont,  West  Virginia   . 

Sept., 

1918 

2,700,000 

Nov., 

1919 

Domestic   Coke   Corporation, 

Cleveland,  Ohio 

July, 

1918 

1,500,000 

Feb., 

1920 

International   Coal    Products 

Corporation,       Clinchfield, 

Virginia 

May, 

1918 

2,000,000 

Aug., 

1919 

The  production  of  toluol  by  the  distillation  of  coal  and 
wood  in  by-product  ovens  was,  however,  a  tedious  way  of 
obtaining  the  chemical.  It  takes  a  long  time  to  construct  a  by- 
product oven,  and  the  output  of  toluol  to  the  oven  is  not  large. 
About  the  time  war  broke  out  in  Europe,  industrial  science  had 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  161 

begun  to  look  for  other  sources  of  the  important  commodity. 
There  was,  for  instance,  ordinary  artificial  gas,  which  con- 
tains considerable  quantities  of  toluol.  These  quantities  repre- 
sented, to  be  sure,  considerable  heating  and  illuminating 
power;  but  it  was  better  that  the  householders  of  the  United 
States  should  put  up  with  an  inferior  fuel  for  a  time  than  that 
the  war  powder  industry  should  contend  with  a  shortage  in 
toluol.  In  the  summer  of  1917,  investigators  for  the  Ordnance 
Department  studied  plans  for  stripping  artificial  gas  of  its 
toluol  content.  They  rendered  a  report  in  October,  1917,  in 
which  they  reported  the  plan  feasible,  the  process  relatively 
simple,  and  the  machinery  easy  to  obtain;  and  late  in  Novem- 
ber the  artificial  gas  companies  of  a  dozen  leading  American 
cities,  in  pursuance  of  contracts  with  the  Government,  began 
installing  toluol  plants.  The  first  of  these  plants  came  into 
operation  in  April,  1918 — a  remarkable  record,  considering 
that  the  operating  personnel  had  to  be  enlisted  and  trained  in 
this  entirely  new  branch  of  industrial  chemistry.  The  total  cost 
of  the  installations  at  the  various  gas  plants  was  about 
$7,500,000.  Contracts  were  made  with  gas  companies  in  New 
York  and  Brooklyn,  Boston,  New  Haven,  Albany,  Utica, 
Elizabeth,  New  Jersey,  Washington,  D.  C,  Detroit,  St.  Louis, 
New  Orleans,  Denver,  and  Seattle.  The  people  dwelling  in 
these  cities  unconsciously  contributed  to  the  successful  termi- 
nation of  the  war  by  using  for  their  lighting  and  heating  needs 
artificial  gas  considerably  below  normal  quality,  because  of  the 
removal  of  its  toluol.  Tests  in  New  York  City  showed  that 
the  extraction  of  toluol  reduced  the  gas  in  heat  value  approxi- 
mately 6  per  cent  and  its  candle  power  from  the  index  figure 
22  to  16. 

Crude  petroleum  and  some  of  its  principal  distillates 
offered  most  promise  of  all  as  a  source  of  toluol.  Toluol  may 
be  obtained  from  petroleum  by  "cracking,"  a  treatment  of  the 
oil  under  high  pressure  and  in  high  temperature.  There  were 
several  processes  of  applying  this  treatment,  of  which  the 
Ordnance  Department  finally  approved  three  and  awarded 
contracts  under  each. 


i62  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  first  and  most  important  of  the  three  was  the  process 
owned  by  the  General  Petroleum  Company  of  Los  Angeles, 
California.  This  method  used  a  petroleum  distillate  which 
existed  in  large  quantities  and  which,  when  subjected  to  the 
process,  yielded  6  per  cent  of  its  volume  as  toluol.  The  com- 
pany erected  at  Los  Angeles  and  at  San  Francisco  two  large 
plants  costing  approximately  $5,000,000.  These  plants  had 
a  monthly  capacity  of  3,000,000  pounds  of  toluol,  or  a  full 
one-fourth  of  the  total  national  supply  at  its  largest  develop- 
ment. 

Another  process  for  obtaining  toluol  from  petroleum  deriva- 
tives was  known  as  the  Rittman  process.  It  was  evolved  by  a 
scientist  of  the  U.  S.  Bureau  of  Mines.  This  was  also  a  crack- 
ing process,  and  it  was  demonstrated  by  tests  to  be  capable  of 
operation  under  practical  factory  conditions.  At  a  site  on 
Neville  Island  near  Pittsburg  a  plant  for  the  production  of 
toluol  by  the  Rittman  process  was  erected.  This  plant  had 
begun  producing  the  chemical  by  the  time  the  armistice  was 
signed. 

A  third  process  officially  approved  was  known  as  the  Hall 
process.  This  method  obtained  toluol  by  cracking  solvent 
naphtha  by  a  secret  mechanical  system.  The  scheme  was  put 
into  operation  on  a  small  scale  during  1918  at  the  plant  of  the 
Standard  Oil  Company  at  Bayonne,  New  Jersey. 

Picric  acid  was  an  explosive  manufactured  extensively  dur- 
ing the  war  under  the  direction  of  our  Ordnance  Department, 
but  principally  on  account  of  the  French  Government.  One 
of  the  essential  raw  materials  used  in  producing  picric  acid  is 
the  chemical  phenol.  Accordingly  phenol  was  a  commodity  to 
the  increased  production  of  which  the  Ordnance  Department 
had  to  bend  its  energies.  When  we  entered  the  war,  American 
chemical  plants  were  producing  phenol  at  the  rate  of  670,000 
pounds  a  month.  In  October,  1918,  our  plants  were  producing 
13,000,000  pounds  a  month,  and  in  that  time  the  price  of 
phenol  had  dropped  from  46  to  31  cents  a  pound. 

Sulphuric  acid  was  another  commodity  used  in  heavy  quan- 
tities by  the  powder  factories.  The  acid  had  experienced  a 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  163 

phenomenal  increase  in  price,  jumping  from  the  prewar  price 
of  $14  a  ton  to  $60  early  in  1917.  The  sulphur  in  the 
acid  in  normal  times  had  been  obtained  largely  from  pyrites 
imported  from  Spain,  but  the  submarine  blockade  greatly 
hindered  this  trade.  Consequently  our  chemical  factories  had  to 
rely  principally  upon  the  sulphur  deposits  in  Texas  and 
Louisiana.  In  the  early  part  of  1918  there  was  a  destructive 
storm  which  temporarily  curtailed  the  production  of  sulphur 
from  the  Louisiana  deposits,  but  production  was  resumed 
speedily  enough  so  that  the  industry  suffered  no  embarrass- 
ment. 

As  most  persons  know,  nitrates  are  indispensable  to  the  pro- 
duction of  explosives.  The  principal  natural  source  of  nitrates 
is  in  Chile.  The  operations  of  enemy  submarines,  by  reducing 
the  efficiency  of  ocean  shipping,  put  a  limitation  upon  our  im- 
portations of  sodium  nitrate  from  Chile.  The  Government  had 
no  intention,  however,  of  relying  upon  this  uncertain  supply, 
particularly  since  it  was  conceivable  that  a  complete  blockade 
of  our  coast  might  shut  off  trade  with  South  America  alto- 
gether. In  modern  times  science  had  learned  to  fix  in  usable 
form  the  nitrogen  which  constitutes  four-fifths  of  the  air  we 
breathe ;  and  one  of  the  first  war  acts  of  the  Government  was  to 
authorize  the  construction  of  air-nitrogen  fixation  plants  at 
Sheffield  and  at  Muscle  Shoals,  Alabama.  These  two  plants, 
which  used  different  processes,  were  just  coming  into  produc- 
tion when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

The  Government  did  not  rest  on  this  prospective  supply, 
but  began  the  construction  also  of  two  other  great  fixation 
plants,  one  at  Toledo  and  one  at  Cincinnati,  Ohio.  The  build- 
ing project  called  for  the  expenditure  of  about  $25,000,000 
at  each  place.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  the  Government 
terminated  the  incompleted  projects. 

These  instances,  though  they  by  no  means  include  all  activi- 
ties of  the  War  Department  in  procuring  raw  materials  for 
the  explosives  manufacturing  program,  indicate  the  extent  to 
which  the  Government  was  ready  to  involve  itself  in  aid  of  the 
ammunition  industry.  Yet  the  procurement  of  the  raw  mate- 


i64  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

rials  was  but  the  first  step  in  developing  the  industry.  The 
next  was  to  build  up  the  manufacture  of  the  powders  them- 
selves. 

The  artillerist  divides  explosives  into  two  main  sorts,  each 
with  its  own  distinct  function.  Explosives  of  the  one  sort  are 
known  as  propellants.  They  explode  and  send  the  bullet  from 
the  rifle  or  the  shell  from  the  cannon.  Explosives  of  the  other 
sort,  often  designated  by  the  initials  "H.  E.,"  are  known  as 
high  explosives.  The  high  explosives  are  packed  in  the  shell 
themselves,  and  they  cause  the  shell  to  burst  at  their  objec- 
tives. The  manufacture  and  utilization  of  propellants  and  the 
manufacture  and  utilization  of  high  explosives  all  offered  their 
special  problems. 

PROPELLANTS 
Propellants  include  both  smokeless  powder  and  black  or 
smoke-producing  powder.  Of  these,  smokeless  powder  was 
much  the  more  important  during  the  war.  In  1914,  the  total 
producing  capacity  of  all  the  powder  mills  in  the  United 
States  was  approximately  1,500,000  pounds  of  smokeless 
powder  every  month.  Under  the  stimulation  of  war  orders 
from  Europe  this  capacity  had  grown  until,  by  the  spring  of 
1917,  when  we  came  into  the  affair,  it  had  increased  perhaps 
thirty  times.  Once  our  officers  understood  the  situation  in 
Europe  and  struck  the  agreement  with  the  Allies  that  put 
upon  us  the  burden  of  supplying  a  great  part  of  the  explosives 
to  be  used  by  the  anti-German  forces  on  the  western  front, 
the  early  1917  capacity  of  America  for  producing  smokeless 
powder,  great  as  it  had  seemed  to  be,  looked  small  indeed 
compared  to  what  we  should  have  to  attain. 

The  expansion  to  be  sought  was  such  that  the  Government 
could  not  think  of  relying  upon  private  enterprise  to  fill  the 
need.  The  War  Department  itself  constructed  two  of  the 
largest  smokeless-powder  factories  in  the  world.  One  of  these 
was  called  the  Old  Hickory  plant,  because  it  was  located 
almost  on  the  site  of  Andrew  Jackson's  old  home  at  Nashville, 
Tennessee.  The  other,  built  on  a  site  near  Charleston,  West 
Virginia,  was  called  the  Nitro  powder  plant. 


Photo  from    Ordnance  Department 

SMOKELESS  POWDER  ON  CONVEYOR  AT  POWDER  FACTORY 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

CASTING  SHELL  IN  FLASKS 


Photo  from  Winsloxu  Brothers  Company 


FURNACES  AND  QUENCHING  TANKS  FOR 
HEAT-TREATING  SHELL 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

ROUGH-TURNING  NOSE  OF  8-INCH  SHELL 


ARTILLERY  AMiMUNITION  165 

The  Old  Hickory  plant,  the  larger  and  more  complete  of 
the  two,  was  probably  the  biggest  factory  of  its  kind  ever 
built.  It  was  entirely  self-contained,  an  unusual  thing  in  fac- 
tories of  its  sort;  that  is,  it  took  the  initial  raw  material  of 
crude  cotton,  produced  at  the  plant  itself  the  acid  and  the 
solvents  used,  and  put  the  cotton  through  every  process  until 
the  final  product,  smokeless  powder,  was  turned  out  ready 
for  use.  In  the  plant  nine  powder  lines  (each  chain  of  machin- 
ery through  which  the  raw  materials  pass  to  be  converted  into 
smokeless  powder  is  called  a  powder  line)  were  projected,  each 
one  to  have  a  capacity  of  100,000  pounds  of  powder  a  day.  The 
plans  thus  gave  the  factory  an  indicated  daily  capacity  of 
900,000  pounds;  but  the  plant  performed  beyond  expectations, 
and  indications  soon  were  that  its  ultimate  capacity  would 
reach  1,000,000  pounds  a  day.  In  other  words,  this  single 
government  factory  in  full  operation  would  produce  two- 
thirds  as  much  smokeless  powder  in  a  day  as  all  the  powder 
mills  in  the  United  States  in  1914  (and  the  industry  ranked 
as  great  then)  could  turn  out  in  a  month. 

The  Old  Hickory  plant  cost  in  the  neighborhood  of  $90,- 
000,000.  It  was  constructed  by  the  DuPont  Engineering  Com- 
pany under  a  contract  with  the  War  Department.  The  contract 
bound  the  concern  not  only  to  construct  the  plant,  but  also  to 
operate  it  for  six  months  after  its  completion.  It  was  expected 
that  the  first  powder  line  in  the  plant  would  go  into  operation 
on  September  15,  1918,  seven  and  a  half  months  after  the 
contract  was  signed.  The  contractors  broke  ground  at  Old 
Hickory  on  March  8,  1918,  and  pushed  the  work  so  efficiently 
that  on  July  1,  seventy-five  days  ahead  of  schedule,  the  first 
powder  line  went  into  operation. 

The  Old  Hickory  plant  spread  out  over  an  area  of  5,000 
acres,  on  which,  in  addition  to  the  powder  plant  itself,  was 
built  a  whole  city  for  the  housing  of  twenty-odd  thousand 
people,  the  operatives  and  their  families — a  city  complete 
with  schools,  churches,  theatres,  sanitation,  and  all  other  ele- 
ments that  make  up  the  physical  equipment  of  a  modern  urban 
community.  Besides  the  powder  plant  itself,  there  were  built  a 


i66  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

number  of  sub-process  plants  for  purifying  the  cotton  and  for 
manufacturing  sulphuric  acid,  nitric  acid,  and  other  chemicals 
used  by  the  plant.  Each  one  of  these  sub-plants  would  have 
been  in  normal  times  an  undertaking  of  sufficient  size  to  attract 
the  attention  of  the  chemical  industry. 

By  the  date  of  the  armistice  the  Old  Hickory  factory  was 
more  than  90  per  cent  complete,  and  it  was  operating  at 
more  than  half  its  estimated  capacity.  It  had  produced  6,000,- 
000  pounds  of  powder  more  than  had  been  expected  under  the 
terms  of  the  contract  and  had  reached  a  total  daily  capacity 
of  nearly  500,000  pounds  of  smokeless  powder. 

The  Nitro  plant  was  somewhat  smaller.  Its  completed  capac- 
ity was  to  be  625,000  pounds  of  smokeless  powder  a  day.  It 
was  built  by  a  private  contractor,  the  Thompson-Starrett  Com- 
pany of  New  York,  under  direct  government  supervision.  The 
ground  was  broken  February  l.  The  Ordnance  Department 
contracted  with  the  Hercules  Powder  Company  to  operate  the 
plant,  and  at  the  date  of  the  armistice  the  factory  was  turning 
out  over  100,000  pounds  of  smokeless  powder  a  day,  with  the 
prospect  of  a  speedy  increase.  As  at  the  Old  Hickory  plant,  a 
town  of  considerable  size  and  also  many  sub-process  plants 
were  built. 

The  negotiations  leading  up  to  the  construction  of  these 
two  establishments  formed  an  interesting  business  episode  and 
brought  into  the  War  Department's  organization  an  eminent 
business  man.  These  powder-mill  projects  were  a  tremendous 
undertaking.  The  plants  were  the  biggest  of  the  sort  ever  put 
down  on  paper,  and  it  was  realized  that  only  men  and  con- 
cerns of  the  widest  experience  could  hope  to  carry  the  plan 
through  successfully.  Naturally  the  Department  turned  to 
the  DuPonts  as  the  ones  whose  experience  in  great  undertakings 
of  the  sort  gave  the  best  guarantee  of  success.  The  DuPonts 
figured  on  both  jobs,  but  quoted  terms  which  the  Government 
considered  out  of  reason.  The  war  department  executives 
thereupon  approached  Mr.  D.  C.  Jackling,  the  copper  man, 
and  one  of  the  best-known  figures  in  the  industrial  world.  At 
great  personal  sacrifice  Mr.  Jackling  agreed  to  accept  the  posi- 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  167 

tion  of  Director  of  United  States  Government  Explosive 
Plants  at  a  salary  of  one  dollar  a  year.  Mr.  Jackling  at  once 
contracted  with  the  Thompson-Starrett  Company  to  build  the 
Nitro  plant  under  his  direction.  He  was  firmly  of  the  opinion, 
however,  that  the  Government  could  best  be  served  if  the 
DuPonts  undertook  the  construction  of  the  larger  project  at 
Old  Hickory,  and  he  was  able  to  come  to  an  agreement  with 
the  company  that  was  satisfactory^  to  the  Government. 

One  difficulty  that  seemed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  a  speedily 
increased  production  of  smokeless  powder  was  the  fact  that 
the  powder,  to  be  safe  for  use,  had  to  dry  in  warm  air  for  a 
long  period  after  it  came  from  the  machinery.  Before  1917  a 
powder  company  would  not  have  thought  of  selling  small- 
caliber  smokeless  powder  that  had  dried  less  than  six  weeks; 
and  for  the  powder  used  in  propelling  large-caliber  shell  a 
drying  period  of  nine  months  was  usual.  Such  methods  were 
out  of  the  question  in  war  times.  The  Ordnance  Department 
authorized  a  short-cut  process  of  completion  known  as  water- 
drying.  By  this  method  the  fresh  powder  is  immersed  in  warm 
water  for  about  three  days,  and  the  water  is  then  dried  out 
of  the  powder  by  centrifugal  force,  with  a  final  finishing  dry- 
ing in  hot  air.  The  treatment  reduced  the  drying  time  to  four 
days  for  small-caliber  powder  and  twenty-two  days  for  powder 
for  the  larger  guns. 

Just  as  the  armistice  came,  the  experimenters  were  trying 
out  an  entirely  new  dr^dng  process,  known  as  the  Nash  or 
alcohol-drying  process.  The  tests  made  it  seem  that  this  method 
was  a  great  improvement  in  safety,  cost,  and  time.  The  indi- 
cations were  that  the  drying  could  be  measured  in  hours  rather 
than  in  days.  The  process  also  seemingly  ensured  a  tougher  and 
more  uniform  grade  of  powder. 

The  production  of  smokeless  powder  in  great  quantities 
reduced  its  cost  in  spite  of  the  mounting  prices  for  labor  and 
for  many  raw  materials.  In  April,  1917,  smokeless  powder 
cost  80  cents  a  pound  for  the  sort  used  in  small-arms  ammuni- 
tion and  53  cents  a  pound  for  that  used  in  cannon.  Nineteen 
months  later  the  prices  were  respectively  62  cents  and  41  cents. 


i68  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Black  powder,  which  also  ranks  as  a  propellant,  did  not 
have  nearly  so  extensive  a  use  in  the  war  as  smokeless  powder, 
and  its  production  presented  little  difficulty  except  for  the 
fact  that  the  makers  faced  a  shortage  in  potassium  nitrate,  one 
of  the  principal  ingredients.  Germany  is  the  principal  world 
source  of  potash.  \\Tien  the  armistice  came,  experiments  were 
going  on  which  anticipated  the  substitution  of  sodium  nitrate, 
the  Chilean  product,  for  potassium  nitrate;  and,  although  it 
was  never  necessary  to  make  such  a  substitution,  the  indica- 
tions were  that  it  could  be  successfully  done.  When  the  fighting 
ended,  American  factories  were  producing  black  powder  for 
the  Army  at  the  rate  of  840,000  pounds  a  month,  at  a  cost  of 
25  cents  a  pound. 

In  general,  the  goal  toward  which  we  were  straining  was  a 
production  of  one  billion  pounds  of  smokeless  powder  in  the 
year  1919.  To  have  attained  this  production  would  have  been 
to  double  the  rate  of  output  reached  just  before  the  armistice. 
We  expected  to  use  two-thirds  of  this  powder  in  our  own  guns 
and  supply  the  rest  to  the  armies  of  the  Allies. 

LOADING  THE  PROPELLANTS 

When  the  propellant  powder — that  is,  the  smokeless  and 
black  powders  used  for  throwing  bullets  and  shell  from  guns — 
had  been  produced,  it  remained  still  to  load  it  into  cartridge 
cases  behind  the  bullets  and  shell  of  fixed  ammunition,  or  else 
in  bags  used  for  charging  the  guns  of  the  larger  calibers.  The 
loading  problem  ramified  into  three  branches.  One  was  loading 
propellant  powder  into  cartridges  used  in  small  arms — in  rifles, 
pistols,  and  revolvers.  This  sort  of  fixed  ammunition  is  famil- 
iar in  appearance  to  everyone.  But  fixed  ammunition — car- 
tridge ammunition,  in  which  the  projectile  is  fixed  into  a  metal 
container  which  also  holds  the  propellant  powder — was  used 
in  weapons  larger  than  the  small  arms  carried  by  the  individual 
soldier.  The  37-millimeter  gun,  for  instance,  fired  cartridges 
of  fixed  ammunition,  and  so  did  the  commonest  artillery 
weapon  of  all,  the  75-millimeter  gun.  In  fact,  all  the  mobile 
artillery,  in  size  up  to  and  including  the  4.7-inch  guns,  fired 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  169 

fixed  ammunition — cartridges.  The  loading  of  these  cartridges 
was  another  distinct  branch  of  the  ammunition  business.  In 
guns  bigger  than  the  4.7-inch  guns,  the  ammunition  used  was 
of  the  unfixed  type — that  is,  the  projectile,  the  shell  itself,  was 
first  placed  in  the  gun,  and  behind  it  the  artiller\-men  inserted 
a  propellant  charge  of  smokeless  powder  packed  in  bags,  the 
size  of  the  charge  being  regulated  according  to  the  range  de- 
sired. It  was  the  task  of  the  Ordnance  Department  in  its  own 
factories  and  through  its  contractors  to  fill  these  powder  bags, 
and  the  operation  of  filling  them — the  third  and  final  branch 
of  the  loading  problem — was  one  of  extreme  precision  and 
delicacy. 

From  the  powder  mills  the  smokeless  powder  was  shipped 
to  the  bag-loading  plants  in  bulk.  Meanwhile  another  large 
manufacturing  operation  had  been  going  on  in  the  textile  mills, 
which  were  making  silken  bags  and  forwarding  them  to  the 
loading  plants.  Silk  was  used  because  any  other  suitable  fabric 
produces  a  flash  at  the  muzzle  of  the  gun.  The  loading  plants 
also  required  large  numbers  of  metal  and  fiber  containers  into 
which  the  loaded  bags  were  packed  for  overseas  shipment,  not 
to  be  unpacked  until  they  reached  the  battle  field. 

There  could  be  no  guesswork  about  loading  powder  bags. 
A  sufficient  number  of  errors  in  loading  the  bags  might  possibly 
cause  the  loss  of  a  battle.  The  batter}^  commander,  having 
figured  his  range  and  made  ready  to  drop  high-explosive  shell 
on  an  enemy  battery,  had  to  know  exactly  how  much  propel- 
lant powder  he  had  behind  his  shell.  If  the  bags  were  over- 
weight, then  his  mathematical  calculations  would  fail  him, 
and  he  would  overshoot  his  mark;  and  if  there  were  less  powder 
in  the  bags  than  he  calculated  upon,  he  might  drop  shell  in  the 
midst  of  his  own  advancing  troops. 

The  Government  constructed  three  enormous  bag-loading 
plants,  one  at  Woodbury,  New  Jersey,  another  at  TuUytown, 
Pennsylvania,  and  the  third  on  the  historic  battle  ground  at 
Seven  Pines,  Virginia.  These  plants  were  built  at  a  cost  of 
$5,000,000  to  $6,000,000  each,  and  they  were  each  designed 
to  load  20.000  bags  a  day,   although  each  plant  before  the 


170  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

armistice  proved  to  be  able  to  double  this  output  by  using 
two  shifts  of  operators.  The  plants  were  erected  in  a  remark- 
ably short  time.  At  Woodbury,  New  Jersey,  the  work  of 
construction  did  not  start  until  March  19,  1918,  but  the 
plant  was  ready  to  operate  on  May  28  and  actually  started 
operating  on  June  15.  The  work  of  constructing  the  other  two 
plants  was  almost  equally  swift,  and  by  the  end  of  August, 
1918,  all  three  were  in  operation. 

The  operatives  at  the  bag-loading  plants  were  principally 
women.  There  were  about  7,000  workers  employed  at  each 
plant.  Because  of  the  danger  of  the  work,  these  institutions 
had  to  be  placed  remotely  from  settled  communities;  and 
therefore  it  became  necessary  to  provide  special  housing,  facili- 
ties at  the  plants,  a  work  undertaken  either  by  the  War  De- 
partment or  by  the  United  States  Industrial  Housing  Corpora- 
tion. At  Tullytown  these  facilities  included  seventy  bungalows, 
thirteen  other  residences,  and  half  a  dozen  ninety-eight-room 
dormitories. 

The  work  of  loading  propellants  into  small-arms  ammuni- 
tion was  relatively  simple,  the  Frankford  Arsenal  and  the 
expanded  commercial  cartridge  factories  being  able  to  take 
care  of  the  enlarged  program. 

In  all,  nearly  20,000,000  pounds  of  powder  were  loaded 
into  small-arms  ammunition;  approximately  33,000,000 
pounds  into  fixed  ammunition;  and  an  almost  equal  quantity 
into  bags,  which  were  packed  for  shipment  abroad. 

HIGH  EXPLOSIVES 

The  manufacture  of  high  explosives  proved  to  be  much  more 
difficult  than  making  propellant  powder,  as  the  final  produc- 
tion figures  hint.  During  the  war  period  we  produced  nearly 
twice  as  much  smokeless  powder  as  we  did  high-explosive, 
although  in  the  autumn  of  1918  the  rate  of  production  of  high 
explosives  in  the  United  States  had  passed  that  of  smokeless 
powder. 

Best  known  to  the  public  of  all  the  high  explosives  used 
by  the  belligerents  in  the  World  War  was  trinitrotoluol — 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  171 

T.  N.  T.  This  substance  is  a  product  of  modern  industrial 
chemistry,  but  as  a  commodity  it  did  not  rank  high  in  Ameri- 
can commerce  before  1914.  When  the  World  War  broke  out 
in  Europe  the  American  production  of  T.  N.  T.  was  approxi- 
mately 600,000  pounds  a  month,  in  varying  grades  of  purity. 
Nearly  all  this  output  was  used  by  powder  mills  in  the  manu- 
facture of  explosives  for  blasting  purposes.  The  demands  of 
the  Allies  for  high  explosives  had  a  degree  of  stimulating 
effect  upon  the  manufacture  of  T.  N.  T.  in  this  country,  but 
not  so  much  as  might  be  supposed;  for  when  we  declared  war 
in  the  spring  of  1917,  the  American  chemical  works  were  still 
taking  care  of  the  industrial  demand  for  the  commodity  and 
in  addition  were  supplying  about  1,000,000  pounds  of 
T.  N.  T.  a  month  for  use  in  the  military  operations  in  Europe. 

The  energy  of  the  War  Department,  put  behind  the  pro- 
duction of  this  highly  important  chemical  during  the  nineteen 
months  of  our  active  belligerency,  increased  the  American  pro- 
duction of  T.  N.  T.  sixteen  times,  so  that  in  November,  1918, 
we  were  producing  it  at  the  rate  of  16,000,000  pounds  a  month 
for  war  purposes  alone.  The  price  of  T.  N.  T.,  like  that  of 
many  other  commodities  whose  production  increased  during 
the  war  period,  fell  as  the  output  expanded.  When  we  came 
into  the  war  the  average  price  was  $1  a  pound.  Thereafter 
raw  materials  grew  scarcer  and  labor  costs  and  other  costs 
mounted;  yet  tremendous  quantity  production  overcame  these 
factors  and  brought  down  the  price  eventually  to  26^  cents. 

The  expanded  production  of  T.  N.  T.  was  largely  brought 
about  by  private  manufacturers  working  to  meet  enormous 
government  contracts.  Yet  the  Government  never  rested  con- 
tent with  this  private  commercial  expansion :  looking  far  into 
the  future,  it  began  the  construction  of  two  large  federal 
plants  for  the  manufacture  of  the  chemical.  One  of  these, 
located  at  Racine,  Wisconsin,  was  to  have  a  capacity  of  4,000,- 
000  pounds  of  T.  N.  T.  a  month.  The  other  one,  at  Giant, 
California,  contemplated  a  production  of  2,000,000  pounds 
a  month.  Here  were  two  purely  governmental  institutions 
which,  had  the  war  continued,  would  of  themselves  have  pro- 


172  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

duced  more  than  one-third  as  much  T.  N.  T.  as  was  being 
turned  out  on  the  date  of  the  armistice  by  all  the  private  fac- 
tories in  the  United  States,  fostered  and  encouraged  as  they 
were  by  enormous  orders  and  by  an  insatiable  war  demand. 

The  manufacture  of  T.  N.  T.  is  a  dangerous  operation, 
particularly  when  it  is  carried  on  at  top  speed  by  forces  of 
operatives  relatively  inexperienced.  Under  the  circumstances 
the  toll  of  life  taken  in  the  production  of  our  high  explosives 
was  remarkably  small.  The  only  two  explosions  of  any  magni- 
tude that  occurred  in  high-explosives  mills  during  the  war  took 
place  in  T.  N.  T.  plants.  In  May,  1918,  there  was  an  explo- 
sion in  the  factory  of  the  .^tna  Explosives  Company,  at  Oak- 
dale,  Pennsylvania,  that  cost  the  lives  of  a  hundred  persons. 
A  few  weeks  later  sixty  operatives  were  killed  in  an  explosion 
in  the  plant  of  the  Semet-Solvay  Company,  at  Split  Rock, 
New  York.  Both  of  these  plants  were  operating  on  contracts 
to  deliver  T.  N.  T.  to  the  Allies. 

The  shell-loading  schedule  of  the  Ordnance  Department, 
it  should  be  remembered,  called  for  the  loading  of  shell  for  all 
the  larger-caliber  field  guns  with  the  British  high  explosive, 
amatol.  Among  the  weapons  in  this  class  were  the  widely  used 
155-millimeter  guns  and  howitzers.  It  was  evident  that  we 
should  have  to  produce  great  quantities  of  amatol,  although  it 
was  an  explosive  practically  new  to  the  experience  of  our 
powder  makers.  Accordingly,  along  with  the  expanded  pro- 
duction of  T.  N.  T.  came  a  vast  development  of  the  manufac- 
ture of  ammonium  nitrate,  the  other  principal  ingredient  of 
amatol.  Ammonium  nitrate  had  long  been  a  common  com- 
modity in  our  chemical  industry.  It  was  widely  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  commercial  explosives.  Prior  to  1914  the 
American  output  of  ammonium  nitrate  amounted  to  about 
58,000,000  pounds  a  year.  The  expansion  due  to  the  demand 
of  the  Allies  had  by  the  early  spring  of  1917  increased  the 
American  production  by  something  more  than  20,000,000 
pounds  a  year. 

When  we  entered  the  war  the  Ordnance  Department  found 
in  existence  American  facilities  for  turning  out  about  80,000,- 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  173 

000  pounds  of  ammonium  nitrate  yearly.  The  supply,  though 
large,  was  clearly  insufficient  for  our  needs,  particularly  as  it 
was  necessary  under  the  Interallied  Ordnance  Agreement  to 
maintain  the  supply  of  ammonium  nitrate  which  our  factories 
had  been  furnishing  to  the  British  Government,  and  even  to 
increase  it.  Therefore,  while  utilizing  every  bit  of  the  com- 
mercial capacity  and  encouraging  the  expansion  of  the  private 
production  of  ammonium  nitrate,  the  Ordnance  Department 
set  out  upon  the  project  to  build  for  itself  an  enonnous 
ammonium  nitrate  plant  at  Perryville,  Maryland. 

This  plant  was  put  up  under  the  supervision  of  the  Atlas 
Powder  Company  and  operated  by  that  concern  under  an 
agreement  with  the  Government.  The  factory  was  erected  and 
equipped  in  about  four  months  in  the  spring  of  1918,  coming 
into  production  by  the  middle  of  July.  Since  all  the  buildings 
were  absolutely  fireproof,  this  was  an  extraordinarily  swift 
job  of  construction.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  work  of 
building  the  plant  began  before  the  operatives  in  this  country 
were  familiar  with  the  manufacturing  process  to  be  used.  In 
England  there  had  been  developed  an  admirable  method  for 
manufacturing  ammonium  nitrate,  known  as  the  Brunner- 
Mond  process.  In  this  process  ammonium  nitrate  is  produced 
by  the  double  decomposition  of  ammonium  sulphate  and 
sodium  nitrate.  Late  in  1917  the  Atlas  people  sent  several 
chemists  and  other  technical  experts  to  England  to  study  the 
manufacturing  process.  They  returned  a  few  weeks  later, 
and  on  the  basis  of  their  report  the  equipment  of  the  Perry- 
ville plant  was  prepared. 

The  output  of  ammonium  nitrate  under  the  Brunner-Mond 
process  at  Perryville  reached,  before  the  armistice,  the  aston- 
ishing figure  of  452,000  pounds  a  day — a  rate  of  production 
that  would  turn  out  nearly  140,000,000  pounds  of  the  product 
in  a  year.  In  other  words,  at  this  one  plant  was  developed  an 
ammonium-nitrate-producing  capacity  nearly  twice  that  of  the 
entire  chemical  industry  of  the  United  States. 

Ammonium  nitrate  is  a  secondary  product,  dependent  upon 
the  supply  of  nitrogen  in  usable  chemical  form.  The  Chilean 


174  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

deposits  were,  of  course,  the  principal  source  of  nitrates;  but 
the  various  nitrogen  fixation  projects  included  in  the  ordnance 
program  guaranteed  us  eventually  a  domestic  nitrogen  supply 
that  would  make  the  country  self-contained.  The  two  nitrogen 
plants  at  Muscle  Shoals,  Alabama,  and  Sheffield,  Alabama, 
were  equipped  to  produce  nitrogen  in  the  form  of  ammonium 
nitrate  which  could  be  used  directly  by  the  powder  factories. 
Before  the  date  of  the  armistice  these  plants  added  their  out- 
put to  the  total  production  of  the  indispensable  commodity. 
The  total  American  capacity  for  producing  ammonium  nitrate, 
including  both  the  private  and  the  government  plants,  reached 
the  figure  of  20,000,000  pounds  a  month. 

During  the  war  the  French  Army  used  picric  acid  as  a  high 
explosive.  In  the  agreement  with  the  French  we  engaged  to 
pay  largely  in  picric  acid  for  the  purchases  of  French  field  guns 
and  shell  that  were  to  equip  the  artillery  regiments  of  the 
A.  E.  F.  until  the  new  American  ordnance  could  reach  the 
front.  To  keep  this  agreement  the  Ordnance  Department  had 
to  let  large  contracts  for  the  production  of  picric  acid  by 
American  explosives  factories.  The  acid  was  produced  in  ac- 
cordance with  French  specifications  and  was  subject  to  joint 
inspection  by  our  officers  and  those  of  the  French.  It  will  be 
remembered  that,  although  our  Army  used  no  picric  acid 
directly,  the  chemical  was  one  of  the  prime  raw  materials  used 
in  producing  ammonium  picrate,  Explosive  D,  the  filler  in  shell 
fired  by  our  10-inch  guns  and  larger.  Picric  acid,  too,  was  con- 
sumed heavily  by  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  in  the  manu- 
facture of  the  common  war  gas  chlorpicrin.  Consequently  it 
was  necessary  to  turn  out  enormous  quantities  of  picric  acid, 
and  the  production  actually  increased  from  the  600,000 
pounds  monthly  of  November,  1917,  to  a  monthly  produc- 
tion a  year  later  of  over  1 1,000,000  pounds,  or  about  eighteen 
times.  The  expansion  was  nearly  all  accomplished  in  private 
chemical  plants.  Looking  to  a  future  supply  on  a  greatly 
expanded  scale,  the  Government  authorized  and  began  the 
construction  of  three  picric  acid  plants  of  its  own — one  at 
Picron,  near  Little  Rock,  Arkansas,  to  be  operated  by  the  Davis 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  175 

Chemical  Corporation;  another  at  Savannah,  Georgia,  to  be 
operated  by  the  Butterworth-Judson  Corporation;  and  the 
third  at  Grand  Rapids,  Michigan,  to  be  operated  by  the  Semet- 
Solvay  Company.  Each  of  these  plants  was  to  have  a  capacity 
of  14,500,000  pounds  of  picric  acid  a  month,  or  more  than 
the  entire  private  industry  in  the  United  States  could  produce 
in  equal  time.  The  factory  at  Picron  was  the  only  one  to  come 
into  any  production  before  the  armistice  was  signed. 

Explosive  D  was  produced  by  the  ammoniation  of  picric 
acid.  In  May,  1917,  the  American  average  monthly  production 
of  this  explosive  was  53,000  pounds;  by  November,  1918, 
the  output  had  been  increased  to  950,000  pounds  a  month,  an 
expansion  carried  on  entirely  in  privately  owned  plants. 

In  addition  to  these  major  explosives  used  as  the  charges  for 
shell,  it  was  necessary  for  the  Ordnance  Department  to  pro- 
cure explosives  of  other  types  for  use  in  caps,  detonators,  and 
boosters.  The  use  of  the  booster  will  be  explained  in  detail  a 
little  later  on;  here  it  is  enough  to  say  that  it  is  a  charge  of 
explosive  inserted  within  the  main  bursting  charge  in  shell  to 
accelerate  the  rate  of  the  explosion.  The  explosives  used  in 
boosters  and  detonators  were  more  sensitive  than  the  explo- 
sives of  the  shell  proper  and  exploded  at  a  more  rapid  rate. 

The  principal  explosive  used  by  the  Ordnance  Department 
for  booster  charges  was  tetryl.  Tetryl  is  more  sensitive  than 
T.  N.  T.  or  amatol  and  has  a  higher  rate  of  detonation.  At 
the  beginning  of  American  belligerency  the  national  capacity 
for  producing  tetryl  was  less  than  9,000  pounds  a  month. 
This  capacity  was  increased  before  the  armistice  to  160,000 
pounds  monthly,  the  cost  registering  a  decline  from  $1.30  a 
pound  to  90  cents.  The  expansion  was  carried  out  entirely  by 
two  private  concerns,  the  DuPont  Powder  Company  and  the 
Bethlehem  Loading  Company.  The  Government  planned  for 
an  immensely  increased  capacity  for  producing  tetryl  and 
authorized  the  construction  of  a  tetryl  plant  at  Senter,  Michi- 
gan. This  unit  was  to  be  operated  by  the  Atlas  Powder  Com- 
pany and  was  to  have  a  monthly  capacity  of  250,000  pounds. 


176  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

No  production  had  started  at  the  Senter  plant  before  the 
armistice. 

The  Russian  Government  had  been  securing  from  a  manu- 
facturer in  the  United  States,  the  JEtna  Powder  Company, 
another  highly  sensitive  and  rapid  explosive  for  use  in  loading 
boosters  and  fuses.  This  was  tetranitroaniline,  better  known 
as  T.  N.  A.  The  plant  at  Noblestown,  Pennsylvania,  where  the 
Russian  T.  N.  A.  was  being  manufactured  by  the  ^tna  Com- 
pany, was  erased  from  the  landscape  by  an  explosion  shortly 
after  our  declaration  of  war,  and  there  were  no  other  facilities 
in  the  United  States  for  the  production  of  the  explosive.  Ord- 
nance officers  who  had  been  testing  the  substance  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that,  for  boosters,  T.  N.  A.  was  the  equal 
of  tetryl.  The  patent  rights  for  the  manufacture  of  T.  N.  A. 
were  held  by  Dr.  Bernhardt  Jacques  Flurschein,  and  with 
him  the  Ordnance  Department  entered  a  contract.  The  next 
step  was  to  erect  a  government  T.  N.  A.  plant  on  the  factory 
grounds  of  the  Calco  Chemical  Company  at  Boundbrook,  New 
Jersey,  the  plant  to  be  operated  by  the  company  on  a  cost-plus 
basis.  This  mill  came  into  operation  shortly  before  the  date 
of  the  armistice  and  produced  about  8,000  pounds  of  T.  N.  A. 

The  Ordnance  Department  used  a  still  more  sensitive  and 
rapid  explosive,  mercury  fulminate,  in  caps,  primers,  and 
detonators.  Three  plants  in  the  United  States  produced  this 
commodity — the  DuPont  plant  at  Pompton  Lakes,  New  Jer- 
sey, the  Atlas  powder  plant  at  Tamaqua,  Pennsylvania,  and 
the  ^tna  powder  plant  at  Kingston,  New  York.  These  con- 
cerns expanded  their  facilities  to  produce  during  1918  a 
monthly  average  of  50,000  pounds  of  mercury  fulminate.  The 
explosive  was  costly,  the  Government  paying  an  average  of 
$3.21  a  pound  for  it. 

There  was  not  enough  T.  N.  T.  and  amatol  in  sight  to  fill 
our  shell  and  leave  a  residue  sufficient  to  take  care  of  the  tens 
of  millions  of  grenades,  bombs,  and  trench-mortar  shell  that 
the  Government  in  1917  set  out  to  manufacture.  Consequently 
the  Ordnance  Department  began  looking  for  other  high  explo- 
sives which  could  be  manufactured  in  abundance,  but  which 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  177 

would  not  compete  with  amatol  and  T.  N.  T.  for  raw  mate- 
rials. The  officers  found  a  satisfactory  one  in  a  nitrostarch  ex- 
plosive developed  by  the  Trojan  Powder  Company  at  Allen- 
town,  Pennsylvania.  This  commodity,  after  thorough  tests,  was 
authorized  as  the  filler  for  grenades  and  3-inch  trench-mortar 
shell.  The  Trojan  Powder  Company's  explosive  was  produced 
by  a  secret  process  which  no  other  manufacturer  possessed,  and 
therefore  the  Government  was  entirely  dependent  for  its  gre- 
nade and  mortar-shell  explosive  upon  this  one  source. 

Quite  aside  from  its  merits  as  an  explosive,  nitrostarch 
had  the  advantages  of  both  its  cheapness  and  the  fact  that 
it  drew  upon  raw  materials  which  were  fairly  plentiful.  On 
the  average  we  paid  21.8  cents  a  pound  for  it.  It  also  had 
the  advantage  of  being  easy  to  load.  The  production  of 
nitrostarch  began  to  expand  greatly  at  the  Trojan  Company 
plant  in  the  summer  of  1918.  In  July  of  that  year  the  concern 
produced  about  840,000  pounds  of  it.  By  November  they  had 
run  this  production  up  to  1,720,000  pounds  a  month.  We 
loaded  nearly  20,000,000  hand  and  rifle  grenades  with  nitro- 
starch explosive  and  nearly  a  million  shell  for  the  3-inch  trench 
mortars.  Late  in  the  war  the  DuPont  Company  developed  a 
nitrostarch,  known  as  grenite,  which  our  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment tested  and  approved. 

Lyconite  was  a  minor  explosive  produced  for  our  Ordnance 
Department  during  the  war.  It  was  an  invention  of  the  DuPont 
Company.  We  used  it  in  drop  bombs.  We  also  investigated  ani- 
lite,  a  liquid  explosive  developed  by  the  French ;  but  although 
experimentation  went  on  to  make  it  a  safer  product,  we  never 
used  any.  The  Department  investigated  explosives  made  of 
chlorates  and  perchlorates  and  developed  several  types  that 
were  considered  satisfactory,  but  none  of  them  got  into  pro- 
duction. 

SHELL  MANUFACTURE 

While  the  high  explosives  were  being  produced,  another  great 
collateral  manufacturing  activity  was  in  progress,  one  essen- 
tial to  the  task  of  providing  ammunition  for  our  artillery.  Be- 


178  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

sides  the  powder,  the  Ordnance  Department  had  to  produce 
the  shell  themselves  into  which  the  high  explosives  should  be 
loaded.  At  this  point  the  Department  stepped  from  the  chemi- 
cal and  powder  industries  over  into  the  metal-working  indus- 
tr}^  There  it  found  difficulties  quite  unforeseen  at  the  start  of 
the  war. 

It  is  perhaps  not  generally  understood  that  the  shell-making 
industry,  as  we  developed  it  during  1917  and  1918,  was  vir- 
tually a  new  branch  of  manufacture  to  the  metal-working 
industries  of  the  United  States  and  to  our  ordnance  experts. 
We  had  to  build  the  industry  from  the  ground  up.  That  this 
was  true  was  partially  due  to  the  fact  that  we  abandoned  shell 
of  the  type  our  army  contractors  had  known  and  adopted  shell 
radically  unlike  any  which  American  guns  had  ever  fired 
before  1917. 

The  old  American  shell  had  been  largely  of  the  base-fuse 
type — that  is,  the  fuse  was  inserted  into  the  shell  at  its  base, 
resting  upon  the  propelling  powder  when  the  shell  was  in  the 
gun  ready  for  firing.  European  practice,  on  the  other  hand, 
screwed  the  fuse  into  the  nose  of  a  shell,  utilizing  an  attach- 
ment known  as  the  adapter,  to  enable  the  artillerist  in  the 
field  to  insert  the  sort  of  fuse  he  desired. 

The  explosion  of  an  H.  E.  shell  is  really  a  series  of  explo- 
sions. The  process  of  the  burst  is  about  as  follows:  The  firing 
pin  strikes  the  percussion  primer,  which  explodes  the  detonator. 
The  detonator  is  filled  with  some  easily  detonated  substance, 
such  as  fulminate  of  mercury.  The  concussion  of  this  explosion 
sets  off  the  charge  held  within  the  long  tube  which  extends 
down  the  middle  of  the  shell  and  which  is  known  as  the 
booster.  The  booster  charge  is  a  substance  easily  exploded,  such 
as  tetryl  or  tetranitroaniline  (T.  N.  A.).  The  explosion  of  the 
booster  jars  off  the  main  charge  of  the  shell,  T.  N.  T.  or 
amatol.  This  system  of  detonator,  booster,  and  main  charge 
gives  control  of  the  explosives  within  the  shell,  safety  in 
handling  the  shell,  and  complete  explosion  when  the  shell 
bursts.  Without  the  action  of  the  booster  charge  on  the  main 
charge  of  the  shell,  the  latter  would  be  only  partially  burned 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  179 

when  the  shell  exploded,  and  part  of  the  main  charge  would 
thus  waste  itself  in  the  open  air. 

The  adapter  is  the  metallic  device  that  holds  the  booster  and 
fuse  and  fastens  them  in  the  shell.  The  adapter,  therefore,  is  a 
broad  ring,  screw-threaded  both  outside  and  inside.  The  inside 
diameter  is  uniform,  so  as  to  allow  the  same  size  of  booster  and 
fuse  to  be  screwed  into  shell  of  different  sizes.  The  outside 
diameters  of  the  adapters  vary  with  the  sizes  of  the  shell  they 
are  made  to  fit,  the  rings  thus  being  thicker  or  thinner  as  may 
be  required.  Fuses  of  several  sorts  are  employed  by  the  mod- 
ern artillerist;  and  into  shell  equipped  with  adapters,  any 
fuse  may  be  inserted  in  the  field,  right  at  the  gun. 

The  boosters  and  adapters  were  what  gave  our  manufactur- 
ers the  trouble — unexpectedly,  because  the  contrivances  seemed 
at  first  glance  to  be  simple,  and  it  was  thought  that  our  metal- 
working  factories  would  have  no  difficulty  in  coming  into 
enormous  production  of  them.  The  bitter  fact  proved  to  be  that 
the  delay  in  securing  a  sufficient  number  of  boosters  and 
adapters  throughout  the  war  period  put  a  limitation  upon  our 
output  of  loaded  shell. 

When  the  war  began  our  Ordnance  Department  went  ahead 
with  no  thought  other  than  that  we  should  produce  shell  of 
the  base-fuse  type.  On  May  1,  1917,  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment invited  bids  on  its  first  war  order  for  base-fuse  shell  for 
our  3-inch  field  guns.  The  bids  were  opened  on  May  15.  The 
Council  of  National  Defense,  which  had  been  mobilizing 
various  metal-working  plants  of  the  United  States  and  build- 
ing up  a  potential  shell-making  industry,  assisted  in  distribut- 
ing the  contracts,  until  eventually  orders  were  out  calling  for 
the  delivery  of  9,000,000  rounds  of  3-inch  shell  and  shrapnel 
ammunition.  We  were  about  to  ask  for  bids  for  manufacturing 
American-type  shell  and  shrapnel  for  the  other  guns  and 
howitzers  when  the  French  Military  Mission  arrived  in  the 
United  States.  Immediately  the  French  proposed  that  we 
change  our  3-inch  and  6-inch  guns  to  the  75-millimeter  and 
155-millimeter  dimensions  respectively  and  use  ammunition 
from  a  common  pool  to  which  we  should  contribute. 


i8o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

This  plan  meant  that  all  ammunition  in  use  by  the  American 
and  French  armies,  at  any  rate,  must  be  interchangeable.  It 
followed  that  we  should  have  to  adopt  the  French  shell  designs 
in  our  manufacturing  program.  The  decision  to  do  this  was 
taken  definitely  on  June  5,  1917.  About  this  time  also  we  had 
made  arrangements  with  the  British  to  produce  for  our  own 
use  the  8-inch  and  9.2-inch  howitzers  of  British  design,  making 
it  desirable  that  the  ammunition  we  should  produce  for  these 
weapons  should  be  interchangeable  with  British  ammunition. 

These  important  steps  made  necessary  what  was  practically 
a  complete  rearrangement  of  our  shell-manufacturing  plans. 
Instead  of  going  ahead  with  the  production  of  shell  of  the 
American  base-fuse  type,  we  canceled  the  large  orders  that 
had  already  been  placed,  threw  into  the  discard  the  arrange- 
ments made  for  the  additional  orders,  and  awaited  the  arrival 
from  Europe  of  detail  drawings  of  shell,  boosters,  and  adapt- 
ers, which  we  must  have  before  we  could  make  any  start  with 
the  new  program. 

It  was  necessary  in  this  period,  too,  to  decide  upon  what 
foreign  shell  designs  we  should  adopt.  The  Allies,  and  par- 
ticularly the  French,  used  shell  of  numerous  different  sorts — 
thin-walled  and  thick-walled  and  types  ranging  between  these 
extremes,  steel  and  semi-steel  (a  mixture  of  steel  and  iron), 
"streamline,"  and  the  more  common  blunt-nosed  sort.  In 
making  our  selection  of  designs  we  were  guided  by  practical 
considerations  of  factory  expediency. 

Though  in  general  we  molded  our  industry  into  a  foreign 
pattern,  in  one  respect  we  were  unwilling  to  follow  European 
practice.  Both  the  French  and  the  British  ammunition  makers 
submitted  their  steel  shell  to  drastic  heat  treatments  which 
our  metallurgists  did  not  consider  necessary,  particularly  in 
shell  of  the  thick-walled  type.  Moreover,  our  manufacturers 
insisted  (with  complete  truth)  that  there  were  not  enough 
heat-treating  facilities  in  the  United  States  to  take  care  of  the 
shell  program  as  projected,  if  we  followed  foreign  practice  in 
this  particular.  The  result  was  that,  while  we  adopted  French 
and  British  shell  completely  in  their  designs,  we  permitted  the 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  181 

American  industry  to  employ  its  own  metallurgical  practices. 
Possibly  the  foreign  officers  were  dubious  about  the  merit  of 
the  American  shell  produced  in  this  fashion;  but  the  justifica- 
tion of  the  Ordnance  Department  lies  in  the  fact  that  later  on 
the  French,  after  test-firing  10,000  American-built  75-milli- 
meter shell,  pronounced  them  in  every  way  the  equal  of  French 
shell  and  admitted  our  product  to  the  ammunition  pool. 

Though  it  adopted  French  and  British  specifications  for 
shell,  the  Ordnance  Department  used  American  designs  for 
fuses.  Our  fuses  were  approved  by  the  Allied  experts.  In  fact, 
it  was  generally  agreed  that  the  American  time  fuse  was  better 
than  any  other  in  use  by  the  Allied  side.  The  result  of  the 
decision  to  manufacture  American-designed  fuses  was  that 
our  factories  early  came  into  quantity  production  of  these 
essential  elements.  There  never  was  a  shortage  of  fuses. 

No  such  success  met  the  production  of  adapters  and  boosters. 
We  had  had  no  experience  in  their  manufacture,  and  our  lack 
of  experience  brought  about  numerous  difficulties.  Whenever 
the  manufacture  met  trouble  it  was  necessary  either  to  await 
information  from  Europe  before  the  production  could  go  on 
again,  or  else  to  hold  up  the  work  until  we  resolved  the  diffi- 
culties by  independent  experiment. 

From  the  beginning  it  was  evident  that  for  our  war  shell 
we  could  not  rely  on  factories  able  to  turn  out  completed  shell 
or  complete  rounds  of  ammunition.  The  American  plants  capa- 
ble of  such  complete  manufacture  were  few  in  number.  To 
utilize  the  metal-working  industry  to  its  greatest  capacity,  the 
program  was  to  make  the  production  of  shell  an  assembling 
job  and  to  scatter  throughout  the  United  States  contracts  large 
and  small  for  the  manufacture  of  shell  parts.  It  was  early 
realized  that,  with  so  many  contractors  bidding  for  steel  forg- 
ings  and  other  raw  materials,  prices  would  leap  and  shortages 
would  occur.  Therefore  the  Government  itself  went  into  the 
market  and  purchased  raw  materials  for  the  shell  makers, 
including  castings  and  semi-finished  components. 

This  is  a  fitting  place  to  acknowledge  the  debt  of  the  War 
Department  to  the  War  Industries  Board.  That  organization 


i82  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

had  many  important  duties ;  duties  which  grew  in  number  and 
importance  as  time  went  on,  until,  as  the  armistice  drew  nigh, 
it  was  rapidly  assuming  the  character  and  position  of  a  direc- 
torate of  national  defense — a  body  superior  in  powers  to  both 
the  War  and  Navy  Departments.  Among  the  many  activities 
of  the  War  Industries  Board  none  was  more  important,  and 
none  was  carried  out  with  more  efficiency,  than  the  procuring 
of  raw  materials  for  the  manufacture  of  munitions.  In  the 
procurement  of  raw  materials  for  the  powder  and  shell  manu- 
facture, the  War  Industries  Board  was  particularly  effective. 
Mr.  Bernard  M.  Baruch,  the  director  of  the  Board,  took  per- 
sonal charge  of  the  procurement  of  nitrates,  and  it  was  largely 
due  to  his  persistence  that  an  adequate  number  of  ships  were 
held  in  the  South  American  nitrate  trade,  guaranteeing  to  us 
an  ample  reserve  of  Chilean  nitrate  for  our  powder  manu- 
facture. The  War  Industries  Board  led  the  way  in  developing 
the  manufacturing  resources  for  other  raw  materials  used  in 
the  ammunition  industry;  and  it  was  the  agency  which  built 
up  the  manufacture  of  shell,  for  which  it  procured  the  raw 
metallic  materials.  The  results  of  these  efforts  were  shown  in 
the  final  production  figures.  No  branch  of  ordnance  manufac- 
ture was  so  successful,  from  the  standpoint  of  actual  output, 
as  the  manufacture  of  powders  and  high  explosives. 

After  overcoming  almost  innumerable  obstacles,  the  United 
States  eventually  developed  an  enormous  shell  industry.  The 
machine  shops  turned  out,  in  all,  something  less  than  12,000,- 
000  shell  for  the  75-millimeter  guns  during  the  war.  Of  these, 
nearly  3,000,000  passed  inspection  in  the  month  of  October 
alone,  a  fact  which  shows  the  momentum  finally  attained. 
Over  7,000,000  adapters  and  boosters  for  75-millimeter  shell 
had  been  machined  up  to  November  1,  1918,  and  of  these 
nearly  3,000,000  passed  inspection  in  October.  Up  to  Novem- 
ber 1,  1918,  nearly  a  million  4.7-inch  shell  were  produced 
complete  and  ready  for  loading,  together  with  something  over 
600,000  adapters  and  boosters,  which,  moreover,  could  be  used 
in  shell  of  other  sizes.  Over  2,000,000  shell  of  the  155-milli- 
meter size  were  produced  ready  for  loading  up  to  November 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

MACHINING  ROOM  IN  SHELL  PLANT 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

COMPLETING  MANUFACTURE  OF  SHELL 


^  =  ^  ....■llllllllt  *ss^ 


Photo  from  S.  A.   Woods  Machine  Company 

SHELL,  WITHOUT  FUSES,  READY  FOR  GOVERN- 
MENT INSPECTION 


Photo  from  Willys-Overland,  Inc. 

SHELL  READY  FOR  PACKING  AND  SHIPMENT 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  183 

1,  1918,  and  over  2,500,000  boosters  and  adapters  for  shell 
of  this  size. 

LOADING  THE  SHELL 
After  the  high  explosive  was  made  and  after  the  shell  were 
produced  complete  with  fuses,  boosters,  and  adapters,  there 
remained  still  to  be  accomplished  a  tremendous  operation — 
loading  the  bursting  charges  into  the  shell. 

Explosive  D,  the  only  shell  filler  handled  by  American 
ammunition  makers  on  army  account  prior  to  1917,  was 
loaded  into  shell  by  hydraulic  pressure.  The  adoption  of  nose- 
fuse  shell  and  of  the  new  explosives,  amatol  and  T.  N.  T., 
made  necessary  the  use  of  new  methods  of  shell  loading.  In 
effect,  the  entire  war  industry  of  shell  loading,  as  built  up  by 
the  War  Department  after  the  declaration  of  war  in  1917,  was 
a  new  thing. 

The  first  step  was  to  arrange  with  various  manufacturers  of 
the  United  States  to  erect  and  equip  new  shell-loading 
plants — fourteen  in  all  they  numbered,  before  the  armistice 
called  a  halt  to  the  expansion.  These  plants  were  either  en- 
tirely new  projects,  built  at  convenient  locations  by  concerns 
some  of  which  had  had  no  previous  experience  in  the  work, 
or  else  installations  added  to  existing  munitions  plants.  Cer- 
tain concerns  with  experience  in  the  work  built  entirely  new 
factories  to  handle  government  shell-loading  contracts.  The 
list  as  it  existed  on  the  day  of  the  armistice  was  as  follows : 


i84 


THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


Total 

capacity 

daily 

Company 

Location 

{shell) 

T.  A.  Gillespie  Loading  Com- 

pany 

Morgan,  New  Jersey 

47,000 

T.  A.  Gillespie  Loading  Com- 

pany 

Parlin,  New  Jersey 

25,000 

T.  A.  Gillespie  Loading  Com- 

pany 

Runyon,  New  York 

3>500 

Poole     Engineering     &     Ma- 

chine Company 

Texas,  Maryland 

15,000 

United  States  Arsenal 

Rock  Island,  Illinois 

1,000 

Sterling  Motor  Car  Company 

Brockton,   Massachusetts 

10,000 

American  Can  Company 

Kenilworth,  New  Jersey 

20,000 

Atlantic  Loading  Company 

Amatol,  New  Jersey 

53,500 

Bethlehem  Loading  Company 

Mays  Landing,  New  Jersey 

41,000 

Bethlehem  Loading  Company 

New  Castle,  Delaware 

27,400 

Bethlehem  Loading  Company 

Redington,    Pennsylvania 

4,000 

DuPont     Engineering     Com- 

pany 

Penniman,  Virginia,  G  plant 

41,000 

DuPont     Engineering     Com- 

pany 

Penniman,  Virginia,  D  plant 

13.330 

J.    D.    Evans    Engineer   Cor- 

poration 
Total 

Old  Bridge,  New  Jersey 

30,000 

331,730 

The  common  method  of  loading  T.  N.  T,  into  shell  was  to 
heat  the  explosive  to  a  molten  state  and  then  pour  it  in.  The 
T.  N.  T.  was  melted  in  a  steam-jacketed  kettle,  and  the  shell 
was  brought  up  to  the  kettle  and  filled.  But  molten  T,  N,  T,, 
in  solidifying,  contracts  in  volume.  If  the  shell  were  to  be  filled 
full  of  the  liquid  and  then  closed,  the  substance  would  develop 
cavities  when  cooling,  and  in  that  event  the  shell  would  not 
be  filled  to  capacity.  Incomplete  detonation  would  probably 
result,  or  it  might  even  fail  to  explode  at  all.  To  get  around 
this  difficulty  the  shell  was  filled  in  two  operations.  The  first 
pouring  filled  the  shell  approximately  two-thirds  full  of  the 
molten  T,  N,  T.  The  substance  was  then  allowed  to  cool  until 
a  crust  formed.  This  crust  was  then  broken  through  and  a 
second  pouring  plugged  up  the  cavities  and  filled  the  shell 
full. 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  185 

We  manufactured  and  used  amatol  in  two  grades.  One 
grade  consisted  of  an  equal  mixture  of  ammonium  nitrate  and 
T.  N.  T.  and  was  known  as  50-50  amatol.  Amatol  of  this 
grade  could  be  melted  and  loaded  into  shell  by  the  casting 
method  used  in  loading  pure  T.  N.  T.  The  other  amatol  was 
called  80-20,  and  it  consisted  of  80  parts  of  ammonium  nitrate 
and  20  parts  of  T.  N.  T.  The  loading  of  this  mixture  into  shell 
was  not  so  easy. 

The  original  method  employed  for  loading  80-20  amatol 
was  to  fill  the  shell  by  hand  with  the  cold  amatol  and  then 
with  machinery  press  the  explosive  to  the  required  density. 
But  this  was  a  process  fraught  with  danger  of  explosion,  and 
the  British  found  that  a  safer  way  was  to  load  the  80-20 
amatol  hot — not  melted,  but  heated  to  the  point  where  it 
became  spongy  and  easily  compressed.  The  shell  was  then 
filled  with  hot  amatol,  which  was  tamped  by  hand  to  the 
proper  consistency.  This  method,  though  safer  than  the  other, 
was  tedious,  slow,  and  ill  adapted  to  quantity  production. 

The  British  industry  then  developed  an  automatic  loader 
which  was  rapid  and  which  entirely  did  away  with  handwork. 
The  loader  was  known  as  the  horizontal  extruding  machine. 
With  this  device  the  British  factories  were  able  to  load  80-20 
amatol  into  shell  as  large  as  those  for  8-inch  guns.  The  rela- 
tively few  amatol  shell  used  in  guns  of  larger  size  were  still 
filled  by  hand  tamping. 

The  extruding  machine  took  the  amatol  into  a  steam- 
jacketed  hopper  that  fed  the  substance  down  through  the 
funnel  upon  a  worm  screw.  This  screw  ran  down  into  the  shell 
and  was  balanced  by  counterweights,  so  that  the  action  of  the 
screw  would  pack  the  explosive  in  the  shell  to  any  desired 
density,  according  to  the  adjustment  of  the  weights.  The 
Ordnance  Department  imported  an  extruding  machine  from 
England.  American  tool  manufacturers  pronounced  it  unsatis- 
factory from  a  constructional  standpoint;  and  we  designed  a 
new  machine,  on  the  same  principle,  but  capable  of  being  built 
rapidly  by  our  metal  workers.  The  development  of  the  Ameri- 
can extruding  machine  occurred  at  the  Picatinny  Arsenal  at 


i86  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Dover,  New  Jersey,  at  the  DuPont  Experimental  Station  at 
Gibbstown,  New  Jersey,  at  the  Morgan,  New  Jersey,  plant 
of  the  T.  A.  Gillespie  Loading  Company,  and  at  the  Penni- 
man,  Virginia,  plant  of  the  DuPont  Engineering  Company. 
As  the  screw  of  the  extruding  machine  filled  a  shell,  it  lifted 
itself  out,  leaving  behind  a  cavity  in  the  amatol.  This  cavity 
was  then  filled  up  with  molten  T.  N.  T.  In  turn,  a  smaller 
cavity  had  to  be  produced  in  the  T.  N.  T.  core  of  the  amatol 
charge  to  admit  the  booster.  This  cavity  was  produced  by  pour- 
ing the  T.  N.  T.  around  a  former  the  exact  size  of  the  booster, 
or  by  plunging  the  booster  itself  into  the  T.  N.  T.  while  it  was 
still  warm,  or,  a  third  method,  by  drilling  out  a  cavity  in  the 
T.  N.  T.  after  it  had  cooled.  There  were  frequent  inspections 
of  shell  as  they  came  from  the  loading  machines.  At  regular 
intervals  a  split  shell — that  is,  a  shell  which  could  be  taken 
apart  in  two  longitudinal  sections — was  run  through  the 
machine.  This  test  shell  was  opened  and  examined;  and,  if 
defects  in  the  loading  were  occurring,  they  could  be  remedied 
before  any  large  number  of  shell  had  been  filled. 

GENERAL  FACTS  ABOUT  AMMUNITION  PRODUCTION 

Smokeless  powder  used  as  a  propellant  charge  would  not 
betray  the  position  of  a  field  gun  during  daylight  hours,  but  at 
night  the  flash  of  the  explosion  at  the  muzzle  of  the  gun  could 
be  observed  for  many  miles.  Chemistry  overcame  this  fault 
by  producing  a  compound  which,  mixed  with  the  propellant 
powder,  would  prevent  the  flash  at  the  gun's  muzzle.  The 
Ordnance  Department  produced  a  large  quantity  of  this  flash- 
less  compound  for  mixing  with  propellant  powder,  either  in 
the  cartridge  cases  of  the  smaller  calibers  or  in  the  silken  bags 
of  the  unfixed  ammunition.  It  was  necessary  for  our  artillery 
observers  to  be  able  to  spot  easily  the  explosions  of  shell  fired 
from  our  own  guns.  Accordingly  our  powder  makers  mixed 
with  amatol  and  other  bursting  charges  in  shell  a  smoke  com- 
pound that  made  the  puff  of  a  burst  conspicuous  at  a  great 
distance. 

One  problem  in  the  shell-manufacturing  program  was  to 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  187 

regulate  the  output  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  metallic  parts 
so  that  they  would  come  to  the  assembling  plants  and  exist 
in  reserve  in  the  proper  proportions. 

With  dozens  upon  dozens  of  metal-working  factories  turn- 
ing out  shell  parts,  the  condition  that  all  parts  must  fit 
perfectly  put  a  burden  upon  the  inspection  service  of  the  Ord- 
nance Department.  In  a  complete  round  of  artillery  ammuni- 
tion, eighty  dimensions  had  to  be  gauged.  It  required  180 
master  gauges  to  standardize  the  gauges  used  in  making  these 
eighty  dimensions  exact;  and  the  actual  number  of  gauges 
used  in  all  the  various  steps  in  manufacturing  a  complete 
round  was  over  five  hundred.  In  addition  to  these,  the  govern- 
ment inspectors  used  over  two  hundred  gauges  in  their  work. 

The  shell-filling  plants  also  assembled  all  fixed  ammunition 
for  the  field  artillery.  Each  filling  plant  accordingly  had  to 
have  great  storage  capacity  for  propellant  powder  as  well  as 
for  high  explosives,  and  also  machinery  for  handling  the  pro- 
pellant powder  and  for  loading  the  cartridge  cases.  Boosters 
and  fuses  were  loaded  at  separate  plants,  but  they  were  sent 
to  the  shell-filling  factories  to  be  packed  for  shipment  overseas 
with  the  shell  to  which  they  belonged. 

The  cost  of  a  75-millimeter  cartridge,  complete  with  loaded 
shell,  fuse,  and  propellant  charge,  was  about  $11.  The  high 
explosive  in  this  shell,  weighing  a  little  over  l  ^^  pounds,  cost 
$1.  The  loading  and  assembling  of  the  fixed  round  cost  $4. 
The  rest  of  the  expense  resided  in  the  metal  shell  itself,  in  the 
propellant  charge,  and  in  the  cartridge  case.  A  loaded  155- 
millimeter  shell,  complete,  cost  about  $30.  The  cost  of  the 
propellant  charge  was  additional  to  this,  since  the  155's  used 
unfixed  ammunition. 

There  was  always  great  danger  of  explosion  in  the  shell- 
loading  plants.  Just  before  we  entered  the  war  an  explosion 
destroyed  the  plant  of  the  Canadian  Car  &  Foundry  Company, 
at  Kingsland,  New  Jersey,  killing  many  persons.  Shortly 
before  the  armistice  an  explosion  wiped  out  the  Morgan,  New 
Jersey,  plant  of  the  T.  A.  Gillespie  Company  and  killed  a 
hundred  of  the  employees.  In  spite  of  the  danger,  it  was  not 


i88 


THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


FIGURE  15 

Improvement  of  Field  Guns  since  the  Napoleonic  Wars 


Type 
Early  rifled  guns 
Later  rifled  guns 
Early  quick  firers 


Muzzle  Velocity 

Date 

1863-1870  1,090  ■ 

1870-1893  1,466  ■ 

About  1900  1,696  mt 


Feet  per  second 


Modern  quick  firers        1914-1918  1,770 


Range  with  Shrapnel 


Yards 


Smooth  bores 
Early  rifled  guns 
Later  rifled  guns 
Early  quick  firers 
Modern  quick  firers 


Smooth  bores 
Early  rifled  guns 
Later  rifled  guns 
Early  quick  firers 


1815-1850 
1863-1870 
1870-1893 
About  1900 
1914-1918 


1,257 

2,004 
4,120 
6,160 
6,500 


Range  with  Shell 


Yards 


1815-1850 
1863-1870 
1870-1893 
About  1900 


1,670 

3.965 
6,168 
7,340 


Modern  quick  firers        1914-1918  8,500 

With  streamline  shell    1918-1919         12,130 


unduly  difficult  to  secure  operatives  for  the  factories.  It  is 
notable  that  fully  half  the  persons  employed  in  the  shell 
plants  were  women. 

STREAMLINE  SHELL 

As  the  war  progressed,  experts  in  the  Ordnance  Department 
were  busy  designing  improvements  for  our  ammunition,  and 
some  important  results  were  attained.  The  Department  had 
gathered  into  its  service  and  commissioned  as  officers  several 
eminent  mathematicians  who  before  the  war  had  held  profes- 
sorships in  various  American  universities.  Among  these  were 
Professor  Oswald  Veblen  of  Princeton  University  and  Pro- 
fessor F.  R.  Moulton,  who,  before  accepting  his  commission, 
was  professor  of  astronomy  at  the  University  of  Chicago. 
These  experts  studied  the  flights  and  trajectories  of  shell  and 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  189 

by  means  of  mathematical  calculations  were  able  eventually 
to  work  out  new  scientific  contours  for  the  missiles. 

The  modern  shell  as  we  knew  it  before  the  war  was  simply 
a  metal  cylinder  cut  off  squarely  at  the  base  and  roundly 
blunted  at  the  nose.  Every  shell  is  zoned  by  a  so-called  rotat- 
ing ring,  a  circular  band  of  copper  slightly  uplifted  above  the 
surface  of  the  shell  to  engage  the  rifling  channels  of  the  gun. 
The  rotating  ring  therefore  gives  to  the  shell  the  whirl  that 
keeps  it  from  tumbling  over  and  over  and  holds  it  accurately 
on  its  course  in  flight. 

In  the  proof-firing  of  our  6-inch  seacoast  guns  which  were 
mounted  and  made  mobile  for  the  field  artillery  of  the 
A.  E.  F.,  it  was  discovered  that  their  fire  was  none  too  accu- 
rate. With  the  gun  itself  kept  precisely  at  a  designated  range, 
the  shell  would  fall  at  widely  separated  spots  at  the  objective. 
The  range-firing  section,  under  Major  Veblen  at  the  Aberdeen 
Proving  Ground,  began  studying  the  6-inch  shell  itself  to  see 
if  the  fault  lay  there,  and  they  discovered  the  cause  of  the 
inaccuracy  in  the  copper  rotating  band.  Although  but  a  slight 
portion  of  this  band  was  upraised  above  the  surface  of  the 
shell's  circumference,  the  enormous  force  exerted  upon  the 
projectile  to  start  it  from  the  gun  actually  caused  the  cold 
copper  to  "flow"  backward.  The  result  was  that  when  the 
shell  emerged  from  the  muzzle  of  the  gun  it  bore  around  its 
sides  an  entirely  unsuspected  and  undesirable  flange.  This 
flange  not  only  shortened  the  range  of  the  shell  by  offering 
resistance  to  the  air,  but  it  was  seldom  uniform  in  its  contour, 
a  condition  which  gave  rise  to  the  idiosyncrasies  of  our  6-inch 
shell  as  they  were  fired. 

The  remedy  was  to  redesign  the  rotating  band,  making  it 
somewhat  thicker  in  front.  The  "flow"  of  the  copper  was  thus 
accommodated  without  causing  any  detrimental  distortion  of 
the  projectile.  The  improvement  made  the  6-inch  shell  as 
accurate  as  any  other  and  markedly  increased  its  range. 

The  scientists  were  to  make  an  even  greater  contribution  to 
the  efficiency  of  the  6-inch  shell.  This  shell,  like  others  in  use 
by  our  artillery,  was  square-ended  at  the  base.  The  designers, 


190  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

in  an  effort  to  overcome  air  resistance  to  the  projectile  in 
flight,  tapered  the  sides  somewhat,  making  the  shell  boat- 
ended.  Then  they  elongated  the  nose,  bringing  it  out  to  a 
much  sharper  point.  The  result  was  a  streamline  design  that 
proved  to  be  extraordinarily  successful  when  put  to  the  test. 
The  6-inch  gun  could  fire  its  old  shell  17,000  yards.  Experi- 
mental shell  of  the  new  design  went  4,000  or  5,000  yards 
farther — that  is,  two  or  three  miles  were  added  to  the  range 
of  an  already  powerful  weapon.  Nor  was  this  design  the  first 
streamline  shell  design  produced  in  America.  On  June  1,  1915, 
Mr.  William  King  Richardson,  an  inventor  of  Leavenworth, 
Kansas,  took  out  a  patent  on  a  long-pointed,  boat-ended  shell. 

At  that  date,  so  far  as  is  known,  no  foreign  army  had  yet 
produced  a  streamline  shell.  Nevertheless  the  French  were 
experimenting  with  streamline  shell,  all  through  the  war,  and 
they  developed  some  successful  types.  We  adopted  the  French 
streamline  75-millimeter  shell  and  put  it  into  production,  call- 
ing it  our  Mark  IV  shell.  The  regular  75-millimeter  shell  pro- 
duced in  America,  known  as  the  Mark  I  1900  shell,  had  a 
maximum  range  of  9,000  yards.  The  Mark  IV  shell  proved 
to  have  a  maximum  range  of  12,130  yards,  the  streamline 
design  giving  it  an  increase  in  range  of  well  over  a  mile.  With 
the  manufacture  of  shell  of  this  type  beginning  shortly  before 
the  armistice,  America  in  the  months  that  followed  turned  out 
several  hundred  thousand  streamline  shell  for  the  75-milli- 
meter guns.  These  shell  are  part  of  our  present  war  assets. 

The  French  also  built  shell  of  semi-steel.  The  claim  was  that 
these  shell  would  be  more  effective  against  troops  than  all- 
steel  shell,  because  they  would  burst  into  finer  fragments.  We 
produced  some  of  the  semi-steel  shell  experimentally.  In  con- 
tour the  semi-steel  shell  was  a  compromise  between  the  old 
cylindrical  shell  and  the  ultra-streamline  type,  but  it  was 
easier  to  make  than  the  latter. 

It  must  be  evident  to  anyone  who  has  followed  the  narra- 
tive through  this  chapter  that  the  war  ammunition  industry 
was  not  only  tremendously  big,  but  exceedingly  intricate.  In 


ARTILLERY  AMMUNITION  191 

importance  it  ranked  with  any  major  branch  of  munitions  pro- 
duction. For  emphasis,  let  us  summarize  and  bring  into  brief 
space  a  statement  of  some  of  the  activities  of  the  Ordnance 
Department  in  building  up  the  ammunition  supply: 

First,  the  procurement  of  raw  materials  for  explosives — 
the  prime  requisite  nitrogen,  involving  the  creation  of  four 
great  nitrogen  fixation  plants,  two  in  Alabama  that  came  into 
production,  and  two  in  Ohio,  authorized,  planned,  partially 
built,  but  never  completed.  Then  toluol,  base  of  T.  N.  T.,  the 
most  used  high  explosive,  and  the  expansion  of  its  supply, 
first  by  the  construction  of  hundreds  of  by-product  coke  ovens, 
secondly  by  the  creation  of  plants  to  strip  the  substance  from 
illuminating  gas,  thirdly  by  extracting  it  from  petroleum  by 
three  different  processes.  The  manufacture  of  smokeless  pro- 
pellant  powder,  involving  the  construction  for  the  Govern- 
ment of  one  powder  plant  that  was  the  largest  in  the  world, 
and  another  that  was  nearly  as  large.  The  development  of  a 
substitute  for  cotton  linters  in  the  production  of  cellulose  for 
the  smokeless-powder  mills.  Loading  the  propellant  powder, 
requiring  the  construction  of  three  great  government  bag- 
loading  plants,  each  employing  7,000  operatives.  The  pro- 
duction of  T.  N.  T.,  involving  the  construction  of  two  large 
government  plants.  The  production  of  the  high  explosive 
amatol,  in  pursuit  of  which  the  Government  built  the  enor- 
mous ammonium  nitrate  plant  at  Ferryville,  Maryland.  The 
production  of  picric  acid  and  the  construction  therefor  of 
three  government  mills  of  huge  size.  Then  the  adoption  of 
French  and  British  shell  and  the  interknitting  of  American 
metal-working  shops  into  an  enormous  shell-manufacturing 
industry.  Finally,  the  development  of  the  great  manufactur- 
ing activity  of  shell  loading. 

Here  was  an  enterprise  that  involved  a  government  invest- 
ment of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  in  plant  facilities 
alone,  and  in  addition  swept  into  its  train  a  large  part  of  the 
American  steel  industry  and  nearly  all  the  large  American 
explosives  industry.  It  should  be  remembered,  too,  that  this 
vast  machine  was  put  together  and  constructed  after  the  sum- 


192  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

mer  of  1917  was  at  hand,  for  the  whole  system  was  predicated 
upon  agreements  made  with  the  Allies  in  the  summer  and 
autumn  of  1917.  Between  that  time  and  the  date  of  the  armi- 
stice the  ammunition  industry  was  set  up,  the  plans  for  its 
operation  were  laid  out,  and  the  industry  brought  forth  a 
finished  product  that  reached  France  and  struck  the  enemy. 
And  behind  these  first  exportations  of  American  ammunition 
the  machine  was  grinding  out  a  weight  of  inateriel  whose  over- 
whelming mass  was  already  in  sight. 

The  American  ammunition  program  has  sometimes  been 
criticized  as  a  failure.  In  the  light  of  the  above  facts,  it  is 
submitted  that,  far  from  being  a  failure,  the  production  of 
ammunition  viewed  as  a  whole  was  one  of  the  signal  industrial 
accomplishments  of  the  war. 


Calibers  fo 
pediti. 
75-mm.  gui 
75-mm.  gui 
75-mm.  gui 
75-mm.  A 
3r-inch  A.  i 
4.7-inch  gu 
4.7-inch  gu 
5-inch  S.  C 
6-inch  S.  Q 
155-mm.  gij 
155-mm.  ho 
155-mm.  sh 
8-inch  how 
9.2-inch  ho' 
240-mm.  he 
8-inch  S.  q 
10-inch  S. 

Total 

Calibers  /i 

St 

2.95-inch 

H.  E. 
2.95-inch 

shrapnel 
3-inch  F. 
3-inch  F. 
3.8-inch  h( 
3.8-inch  h 
4.7-inch  h< 
4.7-inch  h 
6-inch  hov 
6-inch  hov 

Total 
Granc 


Artillery  Ammurtit 

on,  Complete  Rounds — 

Acceptances  in 

Jnited  States  and  Canada 

on 

United  States  Army  Orders  Only 

[Figures  in  thousands  of  r 

ounds] 

To 

ipi8~ 

I     Jan.  F<b.  Mar.  Apr. 

May    Jan, 

July 

Aug. 

iepi. 

Oct. 

Wiii>.    Dec. 

Tout 

ptdilionary  Forcei 

7S-mi>i.  gun  H.  E.   .     . 

23 

287 

809 

1.168 

1.122 

1.175 

790 

J.i86 

75-mm.  gun  ahrapncl 

JO    121     124    483      888 

1.011     1.049 

802 

1.0  J7 

812 

718 

8.(67 

75-mm.  gun  gas  ,     .     . 

■88 

164 

213 

15 

(So 

7J-mni.  A.  A.  shnpnel  . 

92 

97 

181 

■  34 

634 

J-inch  A.  A.  shrapnel  . 

4.7-inch  gun  H.  E.  .     . 

J2 

41 

43 

46 

■  66 

4.7*>nch  gun  shrapnel   . 

9       9      14      17        18 

38 

28 

5-ineh  S.  C.  gun  H.  E.  . 

frinch  S.  C.  gun  H.  E.  . 

2 

1 

16 

23 

62 

iJJ-mm.  gun  H.  E.'       . 

IfJ.mm.  howitier  H.  E." 

ijj-mm.  shrapnel      .     , 

12 

22 

66 

4^ 

93 

234 

6-inch  howitzer  H.  E.  . 

S 

9J-inch  howitzer  H.  E. 

8 

48 

e-inch  S.  C.  gun  H.  E.  . 

20 

11 

31 

iO-inch  S.  C.  gun  H.  E. 

20 

SO 

■1 

II 

8j 

Total 

'29 'ISO '13a 'joo     '906 

1.034     IJII 

1.0SI 

1.984 

2J48 

3.062 

2.i70     2 

OH 

17.297 

CUim  for  t,„  in  Vml, 

StaUt  only 

2.9i-inch      mountain      gu 

H.  E 

21    

22 

2.9J-inch      mountain      gu 
shrapnel             ... 

3, 

9 

,, 

J 

62 

84 

3-inch  F.  G.  shrapnel  . 

M7    164    231     174        J! 

I.6s6 

3*inch  howitzer  H.  E. 

3.8-inch    howitzer   shrapne 

12        1     

13 

4.7-inch  howitzer  H.  E. 

4.7-inch    howitzer   shrapne 

4      

H 

10 

10 

60 

6-inch  howitzer  H.  E.  . 

83 

6-inch  howitzer  shrapnel 

1 

3 

Total 

M98    246    448    343       214 

160          20 

34 

107 

.0 

10 

22 

20.318 

Grand  total  .     -     . 

1427    376    586    84!    1.130 

1.194    lati 

IflSj 

2,091 

2,!J8 

3.072 

2.S92     2 

024 

■AUth 

ck-walled  type ;  not  all  supplie 

with  fuses. 

*  Shrapnel  only. 

CHAPTER  IX 
TANKS 

THE  tank,  more  than  any  other  weapon  bom  of  the 
World  War,  may  be  called  the  joint  enterprise  of  the 
three  principal  powers  arrayed  against  Germany — 
America,  France,  and  Great  Britain.  An  American  produced 
the  fundamental  invention,  the  caterpillar  traction  device, 
which  enabled  the  fortress  to  move.  A  Frenchman  took  the 
idea  from  this  and  evolved  the  tank  as  an  engine  of  war.  The 
British  first  used  the  terrifying  monster  in  actual  fighting. 

There  is  a  common  impression  throughout  America  that  the 
British  Army  invented  the  tank.  The  impression  is  wrong  in 
two  ways.  The  French  Government  awarded  the  ribbon  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor  to  the  French  ordnance  officer  who  is 
officially  hailed  as  the  tank's  inventor.  His  right  to  the  honor, 
however,  was  disputed  by  a  French  civilian  who  possessed  an 
impressive  exhibition  of  drawings  to  prove  that  he  and  not  the 
officer  was  the  inventor.  Wherever  the  credit  for  the  inven- 
tion belongs,  the  French  were  first  to  build  tanks,  build- 
ing them  only  experimentally,  however,  and  not  using  them 
until  after  the  British  had  demonstrated  their  effectiveness. 
In  the  second  place,  it  was  not  the  British  Army  which 
adopted  them  first  in  England,  but  the  British  Navy.  The 
tank  as  an  idea  shared  the  experience  of  many  another  war 
invention  in  being  skeptically  received  by  the  conservative 
experts.  The  British  Navy,  indeed,  produced  the  first  tanks 
in  England. 

But  to  the  British  Army  goes  the  glory  of  having  first  used 
them  in  actual  fighting  and  of  establishing  them  in  the  fore- 
front of  modern  offensive  weapons.  Brought  forth  as  a  sur- 
prise, the  tanks  made  an  effective  debut  in  the  great  British 


194  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

drive  for  Cambrai.  Later  the  enemy  affected  to  scoff  at  their 
usefulness.  The  closing  months  of  the  tanks'  brief  history, 
however,  found  them  in  greater  favor  than  ever,  and  they 
were  used  by  both  sides  in  increasing  numbers. 

Up  to  the  beginning  of  the  summer  of  1917  there  was  little 
accurate  information  in  this  country  regarding  the  tanks. 
Somewhat  hazy  specifications  then  began  to  come  from  Europe 
about  the  designs  of  the  different  tanks  at  that  particular  time 
in  use  on  the  battle  front,  but  these  specifications  were  exceed- 
ingly rough  and  sketchy,  consisting  in  the  main  merely  of  the 
facts  that  the  machines  should  be  able  to  cross  trenches  about 
six  feet  wide,  that  each  should  carry  one  heavy  gun  and  two 
or  three  machine  guns,  and  that  their  protection  should  consist 
of  armor  plate  about  five-eighths  of  an  inch  thick. 

During  that  first  war  summer  the  Ordnance  Department 
started  to  build  two  experimental  tanks.  The  production  offi- 
cers designed  the  experimental  models,  not  to  show  fighting 
ability,  but  to  test  various  methods  of  propulsion.  It  was  de- 
sired to  apply  to  them  the  caterpillar  traction  device  specially 
articulated  with  large  wheels  on  which  the  caterpillar  belt  was 
to  run.  This  combination  of  wheels  and  belt  was  then  being 
used  in  the  designs  for  artillery  tractor  mounts  and  pullers. 
We  also  wished  to  test  in  the  tanks  the  comparative  possibili- 
ties of  gasoline  and  steam  propulsion. 

Meanwhile  ordnance  officers  with  the  A.  E.  F.  were  making 
a  thorough,  if  somewhat  protracted,  study  of  tanks.  Early  in 
the  summer  Lieutenant  Colonel  James  A.  Drain,  an  emer- 
gency officer,  had  crossed  to  France,  where  he  became  ordnance 
officer  of  the  First  Division.  Colonel  Drain  soon  became  an 
enthusiast  for  tanks.  The  war  had  become  a  question  of  which 
side  could  kill  the  most  men,  and  therefore  it  called  for  killing 
machinery.  It  seemed  to  Colonel  Drain  that  the  tank  was  the 
most  efficient  of  such  machines.  After  Cambrai  the  British  held 
it  an  axiom  that  an  army  with  tanks  could  make  twice  the  dis- 
tance at  half  the  cost  in  human  life  that  one  unsupported  by 
tanks  could  make.  Given  enough  tanks,  the  American  forces 
could  go  steadily  through  to  Berlin,  in  Colonel  Drain's  opinion, 


TANKS  195 

and  he  urged  that  the  Ordnance  Department  at  home  go  in  for 
heavy  production. 

In  October,  1917,  the  Commander  of  the  A.  E.  F.  directed 
Colonel  Drain  and  Colonel  Herbert  W.  Alden,  a  temporary 
officer  who  in  civilian  life  had  been  an  engineer  for  the  Timken 
Axle  Company  of  Detroit,  to  confer  with  the  British  and  in 
three  weeks  report  a  plan  for  American  tank  construction.  The 
two  officers  found  the  British  and  French  armies  developing 
their  separate  tank  equipments  without  relation  to  each  other. 
The  British  were  wedded  to  the  heavy  tank,  but  were  experi- 
menting and  developing  a  light  tank.  The  French,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  developed  the  light  6-ton,  2-man  Renault  and  were 
devoted  to  it,  but  were  experimenting  with  a  heavy  tank.  The 
result  of  the  conferences  with  the  Americans  was  a  tripartite 
agreement  that  the  tank  programs  of  the  three  armies  were  to 
be  coordinated  and  that  all  three  nations  were  to  contribute  to 
the  construction  of  tanks. 

As  to  the  light  tank,  there  was  no  questioning  the  superiority 
of  the  Renault.  It  was  also  understood  that  this  was  a  machine 
which  might  be  built  to  advantage  in  the  factories  of  the 
United  States.  The  contribution  of  the  French,  therefore,  to 
the  combined  program  consisted  of  their  secret  plans  and  draw- 
ings of  the  Renault  tank.  These  the  French  authorities  turned 
over  to  the  United  States. 

The  plans  and  samples  of  the  Renault  tank  reached  the 
United  States  in  December,  1917,  accompanied  by  a  French 
engineer  prepared  to  help  us  get  our  6-ton  tank  manufacture 
under  way.  The  drawings,  being  in  the  metric  system,  had  to 
be  translated  to  the  English  measures  system  to  accommodate 
American  shop  practice  and  equipment,  a  task  that  took  time. 
It  was  also  necessary  to  do  some  redesigning,  although  not 
enough  was  done  to  suit  the  American  manufacturers.  Be- 
cause of  the  unusualness  of  the  design  and  the  difficulties 
involved  in  the  manufacture,  it  was  hard  to  find  American 
concerns  willing  to  go  into  the  enterprise.  There  were  no  com- 
panies in  the  United  States  equipped  to  turn  out  the  armor  for 
the  French  tank  as  it  was  specified,  for  the  French  made  no 


196  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

attempt  to  adhere  to  simple  shapes  in  the  plates  required.  The 
Department  had  to  build  up  a  new  factory  source  of  supply 
of  plates  of  this  sort. 

The  difficulties  were  eventually  solved  by  parceling  out  the 
manufacture  of  parts  to  many  concerns  and  designating  three 
factories  as  assembling  plants.  The  Maxwell  Motors  Company 
and  the  C.  L.  Best  Company,  both  of  Dayton,  and  the  Van 
Dom  Iron  Works  of  Cleveland,  assembled  the  Renault  tanks 
and  also  manufactured  some  of  the  integral  parts.  More  than 
twenty  other  American  manufacturers  built  parts  for  the 
machine. 

The  contracts  called  for  the  delivery  of  4,440  Renault  tanks, 
each  to  cost  the  Government  about  $11,500.  Although  the 
manufacturers  did  not  get  at  the  job  until  the  winter  was  well 
advanced,  they  started  to  turn  out  finished  machines  in  Octo- 
ber, 1918,  and  before  the  armistice  was  signed  had  delivered 
sixty-four.  At  that  time  the  production  was  expanding  at  a 
rate  to  leave  little  doubt  that  the  Renault  program  would  have 
been  successfully  completed  by  April,  1919. 

The  French  Renault  not  being  adapted  to  American  meth- 
ods of  mass  production,  the  ordnance  department  designers 
undertook  to  modify  it  with  practical  manufacturing  consid- 
erations in  mind.  The  result  was  what  was  virtually  a  new 
tank  and  one  typically  American.  Our  officers  regarded  it  as 
a  distinct  improvement  on  the  French  machine.  It  was  easier 
to  build;  it  weighed  no  more  than  the  French  machine,  yet 
cost  considerably  less;  and  it  was  a  more  powerful  fighter,  for 
it  carried  three  men  instead  of  two  and  mounted  two  guns,  one 
a  machine  gun  and  the  other  a  37-millimeter  gun.  In  justice 
to  the  original  Renaults,  however,  it  must  be  stated  that  a  few 
of  them  also  carried  37-millimeter  guns.  We  ordered  1,000 
of  these  Mark  I  tanks,  as  they  were  called,  but  the  armistice 
cut  short  the  manufacturing  operation  in  its  infancy. 

Meanwhile,  during  the  summer  of  1918  our  tank  program 
was  enriched  by  the  development  of  a  3-ton,  2-man  tank  origi- 
nated by  the  Ford  Motor  Company.  This  was  much  the  small- 
est tank  ever  built,  and  it  cost  only  about  $4,000.  The  Ford 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 


RENAULT-TYPE  6-TON  TANK 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 

AMERICAN  MARK  VIII  TANK  FORDING  STREAM 


PC 

o 

l-H 


O 


ui 

E 

;^ 

o 
U 

< 

j= 

H 

'C 

>^ 

CQ 

< 

r: 

U 

t-H 

•< 

^H 

< 

6 

C 

O 
C5 

.2 

< 

Fi 

;^ 

1X1 

o 
U 

c 

< 

V 

r, 

rt 

w 

o 

u 

X 

o 

H 

.^ 

< 

TANKS  197 

tank  mounted  a  machine  gun  and  could  skim  (relatively- 
speaking)  over  the  ground  at  eight  miles  an  hour.  Great  things 
were  expected  of  this  implement.  The  War  Department 
plunged  into  the  production,  ordering  over  15,000  as  a  pre- 
liminary. The  Ford  Company,  with  its  well-known  methods  of 
production,  expected  to  turn  them  out  at  the  rate  of  a  hundred 
a  day  after  January  1,  1919.  The  company  built  fifteen  before 
the  armistice,  of  which  ten  were  sent  to  France  for  test  in  the 
field. 

The  construction  of  big  tanks  was  a  different  proposition. 
The  British  were  by  no  means  satisfied  with  their  large  tank, 
and  it  was  decided  to  create  an  entirely  new  design.  An  Anglo- 
American  tank  commission  was  formed  with  Colonels  Drain 
and  Alden  as  the  American  members.  The  chief  designers  of 
the  new  tank,  the  Anglo-American  Mark  VIII,  as  it  was  later 
styled,  were  Colonel  Alden  and  Colonel  Sir  Albert  G.  Stem, 
K.  C.  B.,  C.  M.  G.  It  was  decided  to  erect  the  assembling 
factory  in  France,  where  a  site  was  granted  by  the  French 
Government  and  workmen  were  supplied  for  its  construction. 
England  had  been  building  tanks  since  1915  and  had  devel- 
oped a  suitable  armor  plate.  The  English  also  possessed  guns 
adapted  for  use  in  big  tanks.  The  plan,  therefore,  was  that  the 
British  should  supply  armored  hulls,  guns,  and  ammunition, 
while  we  should  furnish  engines,  traction  mechanisms,  and 
electrical  equipments.  An  interesting  point  in  connection  with 
this  agreement  was  that  it  was  not  military  at  all :  it  took  the 
form  of  an  actual  treaty  with  Great  Britain,  signed  by  Am- 
bassador Page  in  behalf  of  the  United  States. 

As  soon  as  the  agreement  was  signed  the  project  went  for- 
ward. Ground  was  broken  for  the  assembling  plant  in  France. 
The  British  Government  placed  contracts  for  the  production 
of  the  British  components,  and  Colonel  x^lden  returned  to  take 
charge  of  the  work  in  the  United  States.  Each  complete  tank 
was  to  cost  about  $35,000.  The  cost  of  the  American  compo- 
nents was  about  $15,000.  The  American  contracts  went  to 
seventy-two  manufacturers.  The  greater  part  of  the  manu- 
facturing had  been  done  when  the  armistice  was  signed,  and 


198  THE  ARxMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

on  that  day  the  first  Mark  VIII  tank  was  undergoing  its  trials. 
The  whole  project  was  abandoned  after  the  armistice. 

The  trials  of  the  pilot  Anglo-American  tank,  as  it  was 
called,  proved  it  to  be  not  only  a  complete  success,  but  one  of 
the  most  formidable  engines  of  war  ever  produced.  It  was  a 
veritable  dreadnought  of  the  land.  It  weighed  thirty-five  tons, 
and  it  was  as  large  a  machine  as  could  travel  on  a  flat  car 
within  the  French  railway  tunnel  and  platform  clearances.  It 
was  manned  by  an  officer  and  a  crew  of  ten  men.  The  officer  sat 
in  the  conning  tower  and  directed  his  men  through  an  inter- 
phone system  similar  to  that  used  in  airplanes.  The  armament 
consisted  of  seven  machine  guns  and  two  6-pounders,  British 
naval  guns.  One  of  the  machine  guns  was  mounted  in  the  turret 
to  harass  low-flying  airplanes.  The  monster  was  immune  to 
damage  from  ordinary  projectiles.  Originally  we  had  thought 
that  a  tank  ought  to  be  able  to  cross  a  6-foot  trench.  The 
Mark  VIII  could  step  across  a  trench  sixteen  feet  wide  as  if 
it  did  not  exist. 

The  original  big  tank  carried  propulsion  engines  and  gun 
crews  in  the  unpartitioned  hull.  A  shell  that  penetrated  the 
armor  and  wrecked  the  gasoline  tanks  instantly  turned  the 
interior  of  the  tank  into  an  inferno  from  which  no  man  escaped 
alive.  In  the  Mark  VIII  the  gunners  worked  in  a  room  sepa- 
rated from  the  engine  room  by  a  steel  bulkhead.  Mechanical 
ventilation  took  in  fresh  air  from  the  top  and  exhausted 
engine  and  gun  fumes  through  the  ports.  The  side  turrets  for 
the  big  guns  swung  inward  to  permit  the  tank  to  be  compressed 
to  the  width  of  a  freight  car.  The  tank  carried  a  wireless 
equipment.  Its  great  weight  was  so  distributed  on  the  traction 
belts  that  the  ground  pressure  under  the  caterpillars  was  but 
seven  and  one-half  pounds  to  the  square  inch,  about  the  pres- 
sure exerted  by  the  foot  of  a  man.  Thus  it  could  cross  any 
ground  on  which  a  man  could  walk,  and  it  could  make  six 
miles  an  hour. 

It  was  estimated  that  each  Mark  VIII  tank  would  have  the 
offensive  strength  of  1,000  soldiers  and  an  even  greater  de- 
fensive strength.  The  Anglo-American  project  called  for  the 


TANKS  199 

delivery  of  1,500  of  them — the  offensive  equivalent  of  1,500,- 
000  soldiers,  more  fighting  men  than  there  were  in  the  A.  E.  F. 
at  the  time  of  the  armistice. 

Even  this  equipment  did  not  satisfy  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, and  after  the  Anglo- American  project  was  well  under 
way  we  set  out  to  duplicate  the  production  on  our  own,  making 
not  only  motors  and  caterpillars,  but  armored  hulls  and  guns 
as  well.  The  orders  called  for  the  delivery  of  1,450  ail-Ameri- 
can 35-ton  tanks  of  the  international  design.  The  total  big- 
tank  program,  therefore,  if  it  had  been  carried  out,  would  have 
placed  on  the  western  front  the  mechanical  equivalent  of 
nearly  3,000,000  troops. 

The  manufacture  of  the  all-American  Mark  VIII  was  just 
getting  started  at  the  time  of  the  armistice.  Thereafter  the 
orders  were  cut  down  until  they  provided  for  the  completion 
of  only  100  tanks  of  this  design,  all  of  which  were  delivered 
later  to  the  War  Department. 

In  the  summer  of  1918  the  production  of  components  for 
the  35-ton  tanks  was  not  going  ahead  satisfactorily,  and  the 
War  Department  secured  Mr.  Louis  J.  Horowitz,  of  the 
Thompson-Starrett  Company,  as  director  of  tank  production. 
His  presence  at  the  head  of  the  enterprise  had  an  immediate 
effect  in  speeding  up  the  manufacture. 

In  all  the  Government  obligated  itself  to  pay  out  $175,- 
000,000  for  tanks.  This  figure  included  the  cost  of  expanding 
the  facilities  at  various  factories  that  took  contracts. 


Tanks 

Number 

Total 

Number 

accepted  to 

number 

Floated  to 

ordered 

Nov.  IT,  1918 

accepted 

Nov.  II,  1 91 8 

3-ton 

15,015 

15 

15 

10 

6-ton 

4440 

64 

950 

6 

Anglo-A  m  e  r  i  c  a  n 

Mark  VIII       .      . 

1,500 

1 

I 

American  Mark  VIII 

1,450 

100 

CHAPTER  X 
MACHINE  GUNS 

THE  machine  gun  is  typically  and  historically  an 
American  device.  An  American  invented  the  first  real 
machine  gun  ever  produced.  Another  American,  who 
had  taken  British  citizenship,  produced  the  first  weapon  of 
this  type  that  could  be  called  a  success  in  war.  Still  a  third 
American  gave  to  the  Allies  at  the  beginning  of  the  World  War 
a  machine  gun  which  revolutionized  the  world's  conception 
of  what  that  weapon  might  be;  and  a  fourth  American  in- 
ventor, backed  by  our  Ordnance  Department,  enabled  the 
American  forces  to  take  into  the  field  in  France  what  was  prob- 
ably the  most  efficient  machine  gun  ever  put  into  action. 

The  machine  gun  as  an  idea  is  not  modern  at  all.  The  idea 
behind  it  has  been  engaging  the  attention  of  inventors  for 
several  centuries.  This  idea  was  inherent  in  guns  which  existed 
in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries;  but  these  should 
be  called  rapid-fire  guns  rather  than  machine  guns,  since  no 
machine  principle  entered  into  their  construction.  They  usu- 
ally consisted  of  several  gun  barrels  bound  together  and  fired 
simultaneously. 

The  first  true  machine  gun  was  the  invention  of  Richard 
Jordan  Gatling,  an  American,  who  in  1861  brought  out  what 
might  be  termed  a  revolving  rifle.  The  barrels,  from  four  to 
ten  in  number,  were  placed  parallel  to  each  other  and  arranged 
on  a  common  axis  about  which  they  revolved  in  such  a  manner 
that  each  barrel  was  brought  in  succession  into  the  firing  posi- 
tion. This  gun  was  used  to  some  extent  in  our  Civil  War  and 
later  in  the  Franco-Prussian  War. 

In  1866  Reffye,  a  French  inventor,  brought  out  the  first 
mitrailleuse — a  mounted  machine  gun  of  the  Gatling  type, 
drawn  by  four  horses.  It  had  twenty-five  rifled  barrels  and 


PJiOto  from    Ordnance  Department 

AMERICAN  MARK  VIII  TANK  TOPPING  A  HILL 


Photo  from    Ordnance  Department 

ASSExMBLING  MARK  VIII  TANKS  IN  ROCK  ISLAND  ARSENAL 


MARLIN  SYNCHRONIZED  AIRCRAFT  GUN 


BENET-MERCIE  MACHINE  RIFLE 


Photos  from   Ordnance  Department 

CHAUCHAT  AUTOMATIC  RIFLE 


MACHINE  GUNS  201 

could  fire  125  shots  a  minute.  The  weapon,  however,  during 
the  Franco-Prussian  War,  turned  out  to  be  a  failure,  for  the 
reason  that  it  proved  an  excellent  target  for  the  enemy's  artil- 
lery and  was  not  sufficiently  mobile.  Accordingly  the  French 
Government  abandoned  it. 

Sir  Hiram  S.  Maxim,  who  was  American  born,  in  1884 
developed  a  machine  gun  which  operated  automatically  by 
utilizing  the  force  of  the  recoil.  This  gun  was  perfected  and 
became  a  serviceable  weapon  for  the  British  Army  in  the  Boer 
War.  The  Maxim  gun  barrel  was  cooled  by  the  water-jacket 
system.  When  the  water  became  hot  it  exhausted  a  jet  of  steam 
which  could  be  seen  for  long  distances  across  the  South  African 
veldt,  making  it  a  mark  for  the  Boer  sharpshooters.  This  defect 
was  remedied  in  homemade  fashion  by  carrying  the  exhaust 
steam  through  a  hose  into  a  bucket  of  water,  where  it  was 
condensed.  This  Maxim  gun  fired  500  shots  a  minute. 

Meanwhile  the  Gatling  gun  had  been  so  improved  in  this 
country  that  it  became  one  of  our  standard  weapons  in  the 
Spanish-American  War.  Later  on  it  was  used  in  the  Russo- 
Japanese  War. 

The  Colt  machine  gun  also  existed  in  1898.  This  was  the 
invention  of  John  M.  Browning,  whose  name  has  been  promi- 
nently associated  with  the  development  of  automatic  firearms 
for  the  last  quarter  of  a  century. 

In  England  the  Maxim  gun  was  taken  up  by  the  Vickers 
Company,  eventually  becoming  what  is  known  to-day  as  the 
Vickers  gun.  In  1903  or  1904  the  American  Government 
bought  some  Maxim  machine  guns  which  were  then  being 
manufactured  by  Colt's  Patent  Firearms  Manufacturing  Com- 
pany, at  Hartford,  Connecticut. 

In  no  war  previous  to  the  one  concluded  in  1918  did  the 
machine  gun  take  a  prominent  place  in  the  armaments  of  con- 
tending forces.  The  popularity  of  the  earlier  machine  guns  was 
retarded  by  their  great  weight.  Some  of  them  were  so  heavy 
that  it  took  several  men  to  lift  them.  Throughout  the  history  of 
the  development  of  machine  guns  the  tendency  has  been  toward 
lighter  weapons,  but  it  was  not  until  the  World  War  that  serv- 


202  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

iceable  machine  guns  were  made  light  enough  to  give  them 
great  effectiveness  and  popularity.  Such  intense  heat  is  devel- 
oped by  the  rapid  fire  of  a  machine  gun  that  unless  the  barrel 
can  be  kept  cool  the  gun  will  soon  refuse  to  function.  The  water 
jacket  which  keeps  the  gun  cool  proved  to  be  the  principal 
handicap  to  the  inventors  who  were  trying  to  remove  weight 
from  the  device.  The  earliest  air-cooled  guns  were  generally 
unsuccessful,  for  the  firing  of  a  few  rounds  would  make  the 
barrels  so  hot  that  the  cartridges  would  explode  spontaneously 
in  the  chamber,  thus  rendering  the  weapons  unsafe.  The 
Benet-Mercie  partly  overcame  this  difficulty  by  having  inter- 
changeable barrels.  As  soon  as  one  barrel  became  hot  it  could 
be  quickly  removed  and  its  cool  alternate  inserted  in  its  place. 

These  conditions  led  to  two  separate  developments — the 
heavy  type  machine  gun,  which  must  be  capable  of  long-sus- 
tained fire,  and  the  automatic  rifle,  whose  primary  requisite 
is  extreme  lightness.  These  requirements  ultimately  brought 
about  the  elimination  from  ground  use,  in  France  and  in  the 
United  States,  of  guns  of  the  so-called  intermediate  weight,  as 
incapable  of  fulfilling  to  the  fullest  degree  either  of  the  above 
requirements. 

The  machine  gun  produced  by  the  American  inventor, 
Colonel  I.  N.  Lewis,  was  a  revelation  when  it  came  to  the  aid 
of  the  Allies  early  in  the  World  War.  This  was  an  air-cooled 
gun  which  could  be  fired  for  a  considerable  time  without  ex- 
cessive heating,  and  it  weighed  only  twenty-five  pounds,  no 
great  burden  for  a  soldier.  The  Lewis  machine  gun  was  hailed 
by  many  as  the  greatest  invention  brought  into  prominence 
by  the  war,  although  its  weight  put  it  in  the  intermediate  class, 
with  limitations  as  noted  above. 

Along  in  the  first  decade  of  the  present  century  the  Benet- 
Mercie  automatic  machine  rifle  was  developed.  This  was  an 
air-cooled  gun  of  the  automatic  rifle  type  and  weighed  thirty 
pounds.  Light  as  this  gun  was,  it  was  still  too  heavy  to  be  of 
great  service  as  an  automatic  rifle,  for  even  a  strong  man  would 
soon  tire  of  holding  thirty  pounds  up  to  his  shoulder;  and  it 
was  therefore  in  the  intermediate  class. 


MACHINE  GUNS  203 

The  Germans  had  apparently  realized  better  than  anyone 
else  the  value  of  machine  guns  in  the  kind  of  fighting  which 
they  expected  to  be  engaged  in ;  and  they  supplied  them  to  their 
troops  in  greater  numbers  than  the  other  powers  did,  having, 
an  early  report  stated,  50,000  Maxim  machine  guns  at  the 
outbreak  of  hostilities.  The  Austrian  Army  had  adopted  an 
excellent  heavy-type  machine  gun  known  as  the  Schwarzlose, 
the  chief  feature  of  which  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  operated  with 
only  one  major  spring. 

Such,  although  incompletely  set  forth  here,  was  the  machine 
gun  situation  at  the  beginning  of  the  World  War.  The  nations, 
with  the  exception  of  Germany,  had  been  slow  to  promote 
machine  gunnery  as  a  conspicuous  phase  of  their  military 
preparedness.  In  our  Army  we  had  a  provisional  machine  gun 
organization,  but  no  special  officers  and  few  enthusiasts  for 
machine  guns.  We  were  content  with  a  theoretical  equipment 
of  four  machine  guns  to  the  regiment.  The  fact  was  that  in  no 
previous  war  had  the  machine  gun  demonstrated  its  tactical 
value.  The  chief  utility  of  the  weapon  was  supposed  to  lie  in 
its  police  effectiveness  in  putting  down  mobs  and  civil  dis- 
orders and  in  its  value  in  other  special  situations,  particularly 
defensive  ones. 

The  three  years  of  fighting  in  Europe  before  the  United 
States  was  drawn  in  had  demonstrated  the  highly  important 
place  which  the  machine  gun  held  in  modern  tactics.  Because 
of  the  danger  of  our  position  we  had  investigated  many  phases 
of  armed  preparedness,  and  in  this  investigation  numerous 
questions  had  arisen  regarding  machine  guns.  The  Secretary 
of  War  had  appointed  a  board  of  seven  army,  navy,  and 
marine  officers  and  two  civilians  to  study  the  machine  gun  sub- 
ject, to  recommend  the  types  of  guns  to  be  adopted,  the  num- 
ber of  guns  we  should  have  to  the  unit  of  troops,  how  these 
guns  should  be  transported,  and  other  matters  pertaining  to  the 
subject.  Six  months  before  we  declared  war  this  board  sub- 
mitted a  report  strongly  recommending  the  previously  adopted 
Vickers  machine  gun  and  the  immediate  procurement  of  4,600 
such  guns.  In  December,  1916,  the  War  Department  acted  on 


204  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

this  report  by  contracting  for  4,000  Vickers  machine  guns 
from  the  Colt's  Company,  in  addition  to  125  previously 
ordered. 

The  Vickers  gun  belongs  to  what  is  known  as  the  heavy 
type  of  machine  gun.  The  board  found  that  the  tests  it  had 
witnessed  did  not  then  warrant  the  adoption  of  a  light  type 
machine  gun,  although  the  Lewis  gun,  of  the  intermediate 
type,  was  then  being  manufactured  in  this  country.  The  board, 
however,  recommended  that  we  conduct  further  competitive 
tests  of  machine  guns  at  the  Springfield  Armory,  in  Massa- 
chusetts, these  tests  to  begin  May  i,  1917,  the  interval  being 
given  to  permit  inventors  and  manufacturers  to  prepare  equip- 
ment for  the  competition. 

The  war  came  to  us  before  these  tests  were  made.  On  the 
6th  day  of  April,  1917,  our  equipment  included  670  Benet- 
Mercie  machine  rifles,  282  Maxim  machine  guns  of  the  1904 
model,  353  Lewis  machine  guns,  and  148  Colt  machine  guns. 
The  Lewis  guns,  however,  were  chambered  for  the  .303  British 
ammunition  and  would  not  take  our  service  cartridges. 

The  manufacturing  facilities  for  machine  guns  in  this  coun- 
try were  much  more  limited  in  extent  than  the  public  had  any 
notion  of.  Both  England  and  France  had  depended  mainly 
upon  their  own  manufacturing  facilities  for  their  machine  guns, 
the  weapons  which  they  secured  on  order  from  the  United 
States  being  supplementary  and  subsidiary  to  their  own  sup- 
plies. We  had  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war  only  two  factories 
in  the  United  States  which  were  actually  producing  machine 
guns  in  any  quantity  at  all.  These  were  the  Savage  Arms  Cor- 
poration, which  in  its  factory  at  Utica,  New  York,  was  nearing 
the  completion  of  an  order  for  about  12,500  Lewis  guns  for 
the  British  and  Canadian  governments,  and  the  Marlin-Rock- 
well  Corporation,  which  had  manufactured  a  large  number  of 
Colt  machine  guns  of  the  old  lever  type  for  the  Russian  Gov- 
ernment. In  the  spring  of  1917  the  Colt  factory  was  equipping 
itself  with  machinery  to  produce  the  4,125  Vickers  guns,  the 
order  for  4,000  of  which  had  been  placed  the  previous  Decem- 
ber  by    the    War    Department   on    recommendation    of   the 


MACHINE  GUNS  205 

machine  gun  board.  None  of  these  guns,  however,  had  been 
completed  when  the  United  States  entered  the  war.  The  Colt's 
Company  also  held  a  contract  for  Vickers  guns  to  be  produced 
for  the  Russian  Government. 

It  was  evident  that  we  should  have  to  build  up  in  the  United 
States  almost  a  completely  new  capacity  for  the  production  of 
machine  guns.  Nevertheless,  we  took  advantage  of  what  facili- 
ties were  at  hand;  and  at  once — in  fact,  within  a  week  after 
the  declaration  of  war — we  began  placing  orders  for  machine 
guns.  The  first  of  these  orders  came  on  April  12,  when  we 
placed  a  contract  with  the  Savage  Arms  Corporation  for  1,300 
Lewis  guns,  which,  as  manufactured  by  that  corporation,  had 
by  this  time  been  overhauled  in  design  and  much  improved. 
This  order  was  later  heavily  increased.  On  June  2  we  placed  an 
order  with  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation  for  2,500  Colt 
guns,  these  weapons  to  be  used  in  the  training  of  our  machine 
gun  units. 

In  this  connection  the  reader  should  bear  continually  in 
mind  that  throughout  the  development  of  machine  gun  manu- 
facture we  fully  utilized  all  existing  facilities  in  addition  to 
building  up  new  sources  of  supply.  In  other  words,  whenever 
concerns  were  already  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  machine 
guns,  of  whatever  make  or  type,  we  did  not  stop  the  produc- 
tion of  those  types  in  such  plants  and  convert  the  establish- 
ments into  factories  for  making  other  weapons:  we  had  them 
continue  in  the  manufacture  in  which  they  were  engaged, 
giving  them  orders  which  would  enable  them  to  expand  their 
facilities  in  their  particular  fields  of  production.  Then,  when 
it  became  necessary  for  us  to  find  factories  to  build  Browning 
guns  and  some  of  the  other  weapons  on  which  we  specialized, 
we  found  entirely  new  capacity  for  this  additional  production. 
The  first  American  division  of  troops,  sent  to  France  less  than 
three  months  after  the  declaration  of  war,  were  necessarily 
armed  with  the  machine  guns  already  at  hand,  which  were  the 
Benet-Mercie  machine  rifles. 

Meanwhile  the  development  of  machine  guns  in  Europe  had 
been  going  on  at  a  rapid  rate.  The  standard  guns  in  use  by 


2o6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  French  Army  were  now  the  Hotchkiss  heavy  machine  gun 
and  the  Chauchat  light  automatic  rifle,  both  effective  weapons. 
Upon  the  arrival  of  our  first  American  division  in  France  the 
French  Government  expressed  its  willingness  to  arm  this  divi- 
sion with  Hotchkiss  and  Chauchat  guns;  and  thereafter  the 
French  facilities  proved  to  be  sufficient  to  equip  our  troops 
with  these  weapons  until  our  own  manufacture  came  up  to 
requirements. 

The  1st  of  May,  1917,  inaugurated  the  tests  recommended 
by  the  investigation  board,  these  tests  continuing  throughout 
the  month.  To  the  competition  were  brought  two  newly  devel- 
oped weapons  produced  by  the  inventive  genius  of  that  veteran 
of  small-arms  manufacture,  John  M.  Browning.  Mr.  Brown- 
ing had  been  associated  with  the  Army's  development  of  auto- 
matic weapons  for  so  many  years  that  he  was  peculiarly  fitted 
to  produce  a  mechanism  adaptable  to  the  quantity  production 
which  our  forthcoming  effort  demanded.  Both  the  Browning 
heavy  machine  gun  and  the  Browning  light  automatic  rifle 
which  were  put  through  these  tests  in  May  had  been  designed 
with  a  view  to  enormous  production  quickly  attained,  and 
their  simplicity  of  design  was  one  of  their  chief  merits.  After 
the  tests  the  board  pronounced  these  weapons  the  most  effective 
guns  of  their  type  known  to  the  members.  The  Browning  heavy 
gun  with  its  water  jacket  filled  weighed  36.75  pounds,  and 
the  Browning  automatic  rifle  weighed  only  15.5  pounds.  These 
May  tests  also  proved  the  Lewis  machine  gun  to  be  highly 
efficient.  The  board  recommended  the  production  of  large 
numbers  of  all  three  weapons.  The  board  also  approved  the 
Vickers  gun,  which  weighed  37.5  pounds,  and  we  accordingly 
continued  it  in  manufacture. 

The  first  act  of  the  Ordnance  Department  after  this  report 
had  been  received  was  to  increase  greatly  the  orders  for  Lewis 
machine  guns  with  the  Savage  Arms  Corporation,  and  its  sec- 
ond was  to  make  preparation  for  an  enormous  manufacture  of 
Browning  machine  guns  and  Browning  automatic  rifles.  Mr. 
Browning  had  developed  these  weapons  at  the  plant  of  the 
Colt's  Patent  Firearms  Manufacturing  Company,  of  Hart- 


MACHINE  GUNS  207 

ford,  Connecticut,  which  concern  owned  the  exclusive  rights 
to  both  these  weapons  under  the  Browning  patents.  This  com- 
pany at  once  began  the  development  of  manufacturing  facili- 
ties for  the  production  of  Browning  guns.  In  July,  1917, 
orders  for  10,000  Browning  machine  guns  and  12,000  Brown- 
ing automatic  rifles  were  placed  with  the  Colt's  Company.  It 
should  be  remembered  that  the  Colt's  Company  was  in  the 
midst  of  preparations  for  the  production  of  large  numbers  of 
Vickers  machine  guns;  and  the  Government  required  that  the 
Browning  manufacture  be  carried  on  without  interference  with 
the  existing  contracts  for  Vickers  guns.  This  requirement  ne- 
cessitated an  enormous  expansion  of  the  Colt's  plant  to  take 
care  of  its  growing  contracts  for  Browning  guns.  This  concern 
prepared  to  make  the  Browning  automatic  rifle,  the  lighter  gun, 
at  a  new  factory  at  Meriden,  Connecticut. 

In  its  arrangements  with  the  Colt's  Company  the  Govern- 
ment recognized  that  its  future  demands  for  Browning  guns 
would  be  far  beyond  the  capacity  of  this  one  concern  to  sup- 
ply. Consequently,  for  a  royalty  consideration,  the  Colt's  Com- 
pany surrendered  for  the  duration  of  the  war  its  exclusive 
rights  to  manufacture  these  weapons,  an  arrangement  ap- 
proved by  the  Council  of  National  Defense.  Mr.  Browning, 
the  inventor  of  the  guns,  was  also  compensated  by  the  Gov- 
ernment for  weapons  of  his  invention  manufactured  during 
the  war.  In  the  arrangement  the  Government  acquired  the 
right  to  manufacture  during  the  period  of  the  emergency  all 
other  inventions  that  might  be  developed  by  Mr.  Browning — 
an  important  consideration,  for  at  any  time  the  inventor  might 
add  improvements  to  the  original  designs  or  bring  out  acces- 
sories that  would  add  to  the  efficiency  or  effectiveness  of  the 
weapons.  It  should  be  added  that  throughout  this  period  Mr. 
Browning's  efforts  were  constantly  directed  toward  the  per- 
fection of  these  guns  and  the  development  of  new  types  of 
guns  and  accessories,  and  that  his  services  in  this  field  were 
of  great  value  to  the  War  Department. 

When  these  necessary  preliminary  matters  had  been  settled, 
the  Ordnance  Department  made  a  survey  of  the  manufacturing 


2o8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

facilities  of  the  United  States  to  determine  what  factories 
could  best  be  set  to  work  to  produce  Browning  guns  and  rifles, 
always  with  special  care  that  no  existing  war  contracts,  either 
for  the  Allies  or  for  the  United  States,  be  disturbed.  By  Sep- 
tember this  surs'^ey  was  complete,  and  by  this  time  we  also 
had  definite  knowledge  of  the  rate  of  enlargement  of  our  mili- 
tary forces  and  their  requirements  for  machine  guns.  We  were 
ready  to  adopt  the  program  of  machine  gun  construction  that 
would  keep  pace  with  our  needs,  no  matter  what  numbers  of 
troops  we  might  equip  for  battle.  As  a  foundation  for  the 
machine  gun  program,  in  September,  1917,  we  placed  the 
following  orders:  15,000  water-cooled  Browning  machine  guns 
with  the  Remington  Arms-Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Com- 
pany, of  Bridgeport,  Connecticut;  5,000  Browning  aircraft 
machine  guns  with  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation,  of  New 
Haven,  Connecticut;  and  20,000  Browning  automatic  rifles 
with  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation.  In  this  connection  it 
should  be  explained  that  the  Browning  aircraft  gun  is  essen- 
tially the  heavy  Browning  with  the  water  jacket  removed. 
It  was  practicable  to  use  it  thus  stripped,  because  in  aircraft 
fighting  a  machine  gun  is  fired,  not  continuously,  but  only  at 
intervals,  and  then  only  in  bursts  of  fire  too  brief  to  heat  a 
gun  beyond  the  functioning  point. 

At  the  same  time  when  these  orders  were  placed,  the  Win- 
chester Repeating  Arms  Company,  of  New  Haven,  Connecti- 
cut, was  instructed  to  begin  its  preliminary  work  looking  to 
the  manufacture  of  Browning  automatic  rifles;  and  less  than 
a  month  later,  in  October,  an  order  for  25,000  of  these  weapons 
was  placed  with  this  concern.  Then  followed  in  December  an 
additional  order  for  10,000  Browning  aircraft  guns  to  be 
manufactured  by  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation.  A  con- 
tract for  Browning  aircraft  guns  was  also  given  to  the  Reming- 
ton Arms-Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Company. 

Before  the  year  ended  the  enormous  task  of  providing  the 
special  machinery  for  this  practically  new  industry  was  well 
under  way.  The  Hopkins  &  Allen  factory,  at  Norwich,  Con- 
necticut, had  previously  been  engaged  upon  a  contract  for  mili- 


MACHINE  GUNS  209 

tary  rifles  for  the  Belgian  Government.  Before  this  order  was 
completed  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation  took  over  the 
Hopkins  &  Allen  plant  and  set  it  to  producing  parts  for  the 
light  Browning  automatic  rifles.  Even  this  factory,  however, 
could  not  produce  the  parts  in  sufficient  quantities  for  the 
Marlin-Rockwell  order,  and  the  latter  concern  accordingly- 
acquired  the  Mayo  radiator  factory,  at  New  Haven,  and 
equipped  it  with  machine  tools  for  the  production  of  Browning 
automatic  rifle  parts.  Such  expansion  was  merely  typical  of 
what  went  on  in  the  other  concerns  engaged  in  our  machine  gun 
production.  Immense  quantities  of  new  machinery  had  to  be 
built  and  set  up  in  all  these  factories.  But  still  the  Ordnance 
Department  kept  on  expanding  the  machine  gun  capacity.  The 
New  England  Westinghouse  Company,  of  Springfield,  Massa- 
chusetts, in  January,  1918,  on  its  completion  of  a  contract  for 
rifles  for  the  Russian  Government,  was  at  once  given  an  order 
for  Browning  water-cooled  guns.  For  reasons  which  will  be  ex- 
plained later,  the  original  order  for  Browning  aircraft  guns, 
which  had  been  placed  with  the  Remington  Arms  Company, 
was  later  transferred  to  the  New  England  Westinghouse  Com- 
pany at  their  Springfield  plant. 

As  soon  as  our  officers  in  France  could  make  an  adequate 
study  of  our  aircraft  needs  in  machine  guns,  they  discovered 
that  in  the  three  years  of  war  only  one  weapon  had  met  the 
requirements  of  the  Allies  for  a  fixed  machine  gun  that  could 
be  synchronized  to  fire  through  the  whirling  blades  of  an  air- 
plane propeller.  This  was  the  Vickers  gun,  which  was  already 
being  manufactured  in  some  quantity  in  our  country,  and  for 
which,  three  months  before  we  entered  the  war,  we  had  given 
an  order  amounting  to  4,000  weapons.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  fighting  aircraft  of  Europe  were  also  finding  an  increased 
need  for  machine  guns  of  the  flexible  type — that  is,  guns 
mounted  on  universal  pivots,  which  could  be  aimed  and  fired 
in  any  direction  by  the  second  man,  or  observer,  in  an  airplane. 
The  best  gun  we  had  for  this  purpose  was  the  Lewis  machine 
gun. 

For  technical  reasons  that  need  not  be  explained  here,  the 


210  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Vickers  was  a  difficult  gun  to  manufacture.  The  Colt's  Com- 
pany, which  was  producing  these  weapons,  had  been  unable, 
in  spite  of  their  long  experience  in  the  manufacture  of  such 
arms  and  in  spite  of  their  utmost  efforts,  to  deliver  the  finished 
Vickers  guns  on  time,  either  to  the  Russian  Government  or  to 
this  country.  But  by  expanding  the  facilities  of  this  factory 
to  the  utmost,  the  concern  achieved,  by  the  month  of  May,  a 
production  of  over  fifty  Vickers  guns  a  day.  Doubtless  because 
of  these  same  difficulties,  neither  the  British  nor  the  French 
Government  had  been  able  to  procure  Vickers  guns  as  rapidly 
as  they  expanded  the  number  of  their  fighting  aircraft,  and 
consequently  when  we  entered  the  war  we  received  at  once  a 
Macedonian  cry  from  the  Allies  to  aid  in  equipping  the  Allied 
aircraft  with  weapons  of  the  Vickers  type.  An  arrangement 
was  readily  reached  in  this  matter.  Our  first  troops  in  France 
needed  machine  guns  for  use  on  the  lines.  Our  own  factories 
had  not  yet  begun  the  production  of  these  weapons.  Accord- 
ingly, in  the  fall  of  1917  we  arranged  with  the  French  high 
commissioner  in  this  country  to  transfer  1,000  of  our  Vickers 
guns  to  the  French  air  service,  receiving  in  exchange  French 
Hotchkiss  machine  guns  for  General  Pershing's  troops. 

The  demands  of  the  Allied  service  had  brought  forth,  we 
noted,  only  the  Vickers  machine  gun  as  a  satisfactorily  syn- 
chronized weapon.  But  we,  shortly  after  our  entry  into  the  war, 
had  succeeded  in  developing  two  additional  types  of  machine 
guns  which  gave  every  promise  of  being  satisfactory  for  use 
as  fixed  synchronized  guns  on  airplanes.  One  of  these,  of 
course,  was  the  heavy  Browning  gun,  stripped  of  its  water 
jacket.  Because  this  was  a  new  weapon,  requiring  an  entirely 
new  factory  equipment  for  its  production,  the  day  when 
Brownings  would  begin  firing  at  the  German  battle  planes 
was  remote  indeed,  as  time  is  reckoned  in  war.  But  our  inven- 
tors had  been  improving  a  machine  gun  known  as  the  Marlin, 
which  was,  basically,  the  old  Colt  machine  gun,  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's original  invention,  now  of  lighter  construction  and 
equipped  with  a  piston  firing  action  instead  of  a  lever  control. 
In  the  face  of  considerable  criticism  at  the  time,  we  proposed 


MACHINE  GUNS  211 

to  adapt  this  weapon  to  our  aircraft  needs  as  a  stop-gap  until 
Brownings  were  coming  from  the  factory  in  satisfactory  quan- 
tities. We  took  this  course  because  we  were  prepared  to  turn 
out  quantities  of  the  Marlin  gims  in  relatively  quick  time.  As 
has  been  said,  the  Marlin  resembled  the  Colt.  The  Marlin- 
Rockwell  Corporation  was  already  tooled  up  for  a  large  pro- 
duction of  Colt  guns,  and  this  machinery,  with  slight  modi- 
fications, could  be  used  to  produce  the  Marlin. 

We  decided  upon  this  course  shortly  after  the  declaration  of 
war.  Then  followed  a  severe  engineering  and  inventive  task: 
the  development  of  a  high-speed  hammer  mechanism  and  a 
trigger  motor  which  would  adapt  the  gun  for  use  with  the  syn- 
chronizing mechanism.  But  then  occurred  one  of  those  sur- 
prising successes  that  sometimes  bless  the  efforts  of  harassed 
and  hurried  executives,  at  their  wits'  end  to  meet  the  demand 
of  some  great  emergency.  The  improvements  added  to  the 
Marlin  gun  eventually  transformed  it  in  unforeseen  fashion 
into  an  aircraft  weapon  of  such  efficiency  that  not  only  our 
own  pilots,  but  those  of  the  French  air  forces  as  well,  were 
delighted  with  it.  When  it  was  proposed  to  adapt  the  Marlin 
gun  for  synchronized  use  on  airplanes,  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment detailed  officers  to  cooperate  with  the  Marlin  company 
in  its  efforts.  For  technical  reasons  of  design,  the  original  gun 
apparently  had  little  or  no  adaptability  to  such  use.  Many  new 
models  were  built,  only  to  be  knocked  to  pieces  after  the  failure 
of  some  unit  to  perform  properly  the  work  for  which  it  was 
designed.  Nevertheless  the  enthusiasm  of  the  company  for  its 
project  could  not  be  chilled,  and  it  continued  the  development 
until  the  gun  finally  became  a  triumph  in  gas-operated  aircraft 
ordnance.  In  the  latter  part  of  August,  when  we  were  using  the 
Marlin  gun  at  the  front,  cablegram  after  cablegram  told  us 
of  the  surprisingly  excellent  performances  of  this  weapon  in 
actual  service.  It  is  sufficient  here  to  quote  two  of  these  mes- 
sages from  General  Pershing,  the  first  dated  February  23, 
1918: 

Marlin   aircraft   guns   have   been   fired   successfully   on   four  trips 
13,000,  15,000  feet  altitude,  and  at  temperature  of  minus  20  degrees  F. 


212  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

On  one  trip  guns  were  completely  covered  ice.  Both  metallic  links  and 
fabric  belts  proved  satisfactory. 

(Cartridges  were  usually  fed  into  the  fixed  aircraft  guns, 
inserted  in  belts  made  of  metallic  links  which  disintegrated  as 
the  guns  were  fired.)  On  November  2,  1918,  just  before  the 
armistice  was  signed,  General  Pershing  cabled  as  follows,  in 
part: 

Marlin  guns  now  rank  as  high  as  any  with  pilots,  and  are  entirely 
satisfactory. 

The  French  Government  tested  the  Marlin  guns  and  de- 
clared them  to  be  the  equal  of  the  Vickers.  In  order  to  meet  the 
ever-increasing  demands  of  the  Aif  Service  for  machine  guns 
capable  of  synchronization,  the  original  order  for  23,000 
Marlin  guns,  placed  in  September,  1917,  with  the  Marlin- 
Rockwell  Corporation,  was  afterwards  increased  to  38,000. 
Along  in  1918  the  French  tried  to  procure  Marlins  from  this 
country,  but  by  that  time  the  Browning  production  was  reach- 
ing great  proportions,  and  the  equipment  at  the  Marlin  plant 
was  being  altered  to  make  Brownings. 

The  original  order  for  Lewis  guns,  placed  with  the  Savage 
Arms  Corporation,  had  contemplated  their  use  by  our  troops 
in  the  line;  but  when  it  became  evident  that  the  available 
manufacturing  capacity  of  the  United  States  would  be  strained 
to  the  utmost  to  provide  enough  guns  for  our  airplanes,  we 
diverted  the  large  orders  for  Lewis  guns  entirely  to  the  Air 
Service.  This  action  was  confirmed  by  cabled  instructions  from 
General  Pershing.  To  the  flexible  aircraft  work  the  weapon 
was  admirably  adapted. 

To  the  machine  gun  tests  of  May,  1917,  the  producers  of  the 
Lewis  gun  brought  an  improved  model,  chambered  for  our 
own  standard  .30-caliber  cartridges,  instead  of  for  the  British 
.303  ammunition,  with  some  fifteen  modifications  in  design  in 
addition  to  those  which  had  been  presented  to  us  before,  and 
some  added  improvements  in  construction  and  in  the  metal- 
lurgical composition  of  the  materials.  From  our  point  of  view, 
this  new  model  Lewis  was  a  greatly  improved  weapon.  (The 
fact  should  be  stated  here  that  the  Lewis  gun,  as  so  successfully 


MACHINE  GUNS  213 

made  for  the  British  service  by  the  Birmingham  Small  Arms 
Company,  had  never  been  procurable  by  the  United  States, 
even  in  a  single  sample  for  test.)  The  Lewis  accordingly  be- 
came the  standard  flexible  gun  for  our  airplanes.  The  Savage 
Arms  Corporation  was  able  to  expand  its  facilities  to  fill  every 
need  of  our  Air  Service  for  this  type  of  weapon,  and  therefore 
we  made  no  effort  to  carr^^  the  manufacture  of  Lewis  guns  into 
other  plants.  Before  1917  came  to  an  end  the  Savage  com- 
pany was  delivering  the  first  guns  of  its  orders. 

During  the  difficulties  on  the  Mexican  border  the  United 
States  secured  from  the  Savage  Arms  Corporation  several  hun- 
dred Lewis  guns  made  to  use  British  ammunition.  In  order  to 
be  sure  that  the  guns  would  be  properly  used,  experts  from  the 
factory  were  sent  out  to  instruct  the  troops  who  were  to  receive 
the  guns.  Ordnance  officers  also  went  out  on  this  instruction 
work  and  established  machine  gun  schools  along  the  border. 
The  troops  did  not  find  the  guns  entirely  satisfactory,  in  spite 
of  expert  instruction  by  men  from  the  factory.  The  trouble 
with  the  guns  at  this  time  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  company 
making  them  in  the  United  States  had  been  engaged  in  the 
manufacture  of  machine  guns  for  a  short  time  only  and  had 
run  into  several  minor  difficulties  in  the  design  and  manufac- 
ture; difficulties  which  caused  considerable  trouble  in  operat- 
ing the  guns  in  the  field,  and  which  were  subsequently  cor- 
rected in  the  fifteen  changes  mentioned  above.  The  machine 
gun  schools  which  were  established  on  the  border  taught  the 
mechanism  not  only  of  the  Lewis  gun,  but  also  of  the  other 
types  of  guns  with  which  the  various  troops  were  armed.  The 
first  fact  that  these  schools  disclosed  was  that  much  of  the 
trouble  encountered  in  operating  machine  guns  was  due  to  our 
soldiers'  unfamiliarity  with  the  weapons.  At  that  time  we  had 
few  experts  in  the  operation  of  any  make  of  machine  gun. 

Soon  after  the  establishment  of  machine  gun  schools  on  the 
border  it  became  evident  that  the  system  of  instruction  devised 
by  our  ordnance  officers  had  gone  a  long  way  toward  over- 
coming the  difficulties.  The  utility  of  these  schools  was  so 
marked  that  on  the  outbreak  of  the  war  with  Germany  the 


214  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Ordnance  Department  established  a  machine  gun  school  at 
Springfield  Armory.  The  first  class  of  this  school  consisted  of 
a  large  number  of  technical  graduates  from  the  Massachusetts 
Institute  of  Technology  and  other  such  schools.  These  men, 
employed  as  civilians,  were  taught  the  mechanism  of  machine 
guns  theoretically  in  as  thorough  a  manner  as  possible,  and 
were  also  given  an  opportunity  to  fire  the  guns  and  find  out  for 
themselves  just  what  troubles  were  likely  to  occur.  Many  of 
these  men  were  afterwards  commissioned  as  officers  in  the  Ord- 
nance Department  and  sent  to  the  various  cantonments 
throughout  the  United  States  to  establish  schools  of  instruc- 
tion in  the  mechanism  of  the  various  machine  guns. 

After  this  class  of  civilians  had  been  graduated  from  the 
Springfield  school,  a  number  of  training-camp  candidates  were 
instructed  and  afterwards  commissioned.  When  the  full  suc- 
cess of  this  school  was  realized,  it  was  enlarged  and  expanded, 
and  it  instructed  not  only  civilians  and  training-camp  candi- 
dates, but  also  officers  of  the  Ordnance  Department,  who  were 
trained  as  armament  officers,  instructors,  and  the  like.  Later 
the  school  was  still  further  expanded  to  include  a  large  class 
of  men  enlisted  for  duty  as  armorers.  In  all,  over  500  officers 
were  instructed  at  the  Springfield  school.  When  hostilities 
ceased,  the  graduates  of  the  Springfield  Armory  machine  gun 
school  were  in  almost  every  branch  of  endeavor  connected  with 
arms,  ammunition,  and  kindred  subjects. 

Now,  let  us  examine  the  first  results  of  the  early  effort  in 
machine  gun  production.  Within  a  month  after  the  first 
drafted  troops  reached  their  cantonments  we  were  able  to 
ship  fifty  Colt  guns  from  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation 
to  each  National  Army  camp,  these  guns  to  be  used  exclusively 
for  training  our  machine  gun  units.  Before  another  thirty  days 
passed  we  had  added  to  the  machine  gun  equipment  of  each 
camp  twenty  Lewis  guns  of  the  ground  type,  and  thirty  Chau- 
chat  automatic  rifles,  bought  from  the  French.  (The  Lewis 
ground  gun  was  almost  identical  with  the  aircraft  type,  except 
that  its  barrel  was  surrounded  by  an  aluminum  heat  radiator 
for  cooling,  a  device  not  needed  on  the  guns  of  airplanes  be- 


MACHINE  GUNS  215 

cause  of  the  latter's  shorter  periods  of  iire.)  Also,  in  the 
autumn  of  1917  we  were  able  to  issue  to  each  National  Guard 
camp  a  training  equipment  consisting  of  thirty  Colt  machine 
guns,  thirty  Chauchat  automatic  rifles,  and  from  fifty  to 
seventy  Lewis  ground  guns. 

At  the  beginning  of  1918  our  machine  gun  manufacture  was 
well  under  way.  Here  was  the  industrial  situation  at  this  time : 
The  Savage  Arms  Corporation  was  producing  Lewis  aircraft 
machine  guns  of  the  flexible  type;  the  Marl  in-Rock  well  Cor- 
poration was  manufacturing  large  quantities  of  Marlin  air- 
craft machine  guns  of  the  synchronizing  type;  the  Colt's 
Patent  Firearms  Manufacturing  Company  was  building  Vick- 
ers  machine  guns  of  the  heavy  mobile  type;  and  a  number  of 
great  factories  were  tooling  up  at  top  speed  for  the  immense 
production  of  Browning  guns  of  all  types  soon  to  begin.  Mean- 
while we  kept  increasing  our  orders  as  rapidly  as  conditions 
warranted. 

By  May,  1918,  the  first  twelve  divisions  of  American  troops 
had  reached  France.  They  were  all  equipped  with  Hotchkiss 
heavy  machine  guns  and  Chauchat  automatic  rifles — both 
kinds  supplied  by  the  French  Government.  During  May  and 
June,  eleven  American  divisions  sailed,  and  the  heavy 
machine  gun  equipment  of  these  troops,  consisting  of  Vickers 
guns,  was  American  built.  For  their  light  machine  guns  these 
eleven  divisions  received  the  French  Chauchat  rifles  in  France. 
After  June,  1918,  all  American  troops  to  sail  were  supplied 
with  a  full  equipment  of  Browning  guns,  of  both  the  light  and 
the  heavy  types.  Part  of  these  Brownings  were  issued  to  the 
troops  before  they  sailed,  and  the  rest  upon  their  arrival  in 
France. 

The  Savage  Arms  Corporation  built  about  3,500  Lewis  guns 
of  the  ground  type  before  diverting  their  manufacture  to  the 
aircraft  type  exclusively.  By  the  end  of  July,  1918,  the  com- 
pany had  turned  out  17,000  Lewis  aircraft  guns,  not  to  men- 
tion 6,000  of  the  same  sort  which  it  had  built  and  supplied  to 
the  American  Navy.  On  the  date  of  the  armistice  approxi- 
mately 32,000  of  these  guns  had  been  completed. 


2i6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

By  the  first  of  May,  1918,  the  Marlin-Rockwell  Corpora- 
tion had  turned  out  nearly  17,000  Marlin  aircraft  guns  with 
the  synchronizing  appliances.  Thirty  days  later  its  total  had 
reached  23,000.  On  October  1  the  entire  order  of  38,000 
Marlin  guns  had  been  completed,  and  the  company  began  the 
work  of  converting  its  plant  into  a  Browning  factor}^ 

On  May  1,  1918,  the  Colt's  Company  had  delivered  more 
than  6,000  Vickers  guns  of  the  ground  type.  Before  the  end 
of  July  this  output  totaled  8,000,  besides  3,000  Vickers  guns 
which  were  later  converted  to  aircraft  use.  In  addition  the 
Colt's  Company  had  undertaken  another  machine  gun  project, 
of  which  nothing  has  been  said  hereinbefore.  This  concern  had 
completed  the  manufacture  of  about  1,000  Vickers  guns  for 
the  Russian  Government.  At  this  time  the  aviators  at  the  front 
began  using  machine  guns  of  large  caliber,  principally  against 
observation  balloons  and  dirigibles.  The  Allies  had  devel- 
oped for  this  purpose  an  1 1 -millimeter  Vickers  machine  gun, 
which  means  a  gun  with  a  bore  diameter  of  nearly  a  half 
inch.  The  Ordnance  Department  undertook  to  change  these 
Russian  Vickers  guns  into  1 1 -millimeter  aircraft  machine  guns. 
This  undertaking  was  successfully  carried  through  by  the 
Colt's  Company,  which  delivered  the  first  modified  weapon  in 
July  and  had  increased  its  deliveries  to  a  total  of  800  guns  by 
November  11,  1918.  When  the  fighting  ceased  the  Colt's  Com- 
pany had  delivered  12,000  heavy  Vickers  guns  and  nearly 
1,000  of  the  aircraft  type.  As  was  mentioned  before,  a  con- 
siderable quantity  of  Vickers  ground  guns  had  been  subse- 
quently converted  to  aircraft  use.  The  production  of  ground 
type  Vickers  ceased  on  September  12,  1918,  by  which  date 
the  manufacture  of  Browning  guns  had  developed  sufficiently 
to  meet  all  our  future  needs.  Thereafter  the  Colt's  plant  pro- 
duced the  aircraft  types  of  Vickers  guns  only.  We  shipped 
6,309  Vickers  ground  guns  overseas  before  the  armistice  was 
signed,  besides  equipping  six  France-bound  divisions  of  troops 
with  these  weapons  in  this  country,  making  a  total  of  7,653 
American-built  Vickers  in  the  hands  of  the  American  Expe- 
ditionary Forces.  Later,  we  planned  to  replace  these  weapons 


MACHINE  GUNS  217 

with  Brownings,  turning  over  the  Vickers  guns  to  the  Air 
Service. 

America's  greatest  feat  in  machine  gun  production  was  the 
development  of  the  Browning  weapons.  These,  as  has  been 
noted,  were  of  three  types:  the  heavy  Browning  water-cooled 
gun,  weighing  37  pounds,  for  the  use  of  our  troops  in  the 
field;  the  light  Browning  automatic  rifle,  weighing  15.5 
pounds,  and  in  appearance  similar  to  the  ordinary  service 
rifle,  also  for  the  use  of  our  soldiers  fighting  on  the  ground; 
and,  finally,  the  Browning  synchronized  aircraft  gun  of  the 
rigid  type,  which  was  the  Browning  heavy  machine  gun  made 
lighter  by  the  elimination  of  its  water  jacket,  speeded  up  to 
double  the  rate  of  fire,  and  provided  with  the  additional 
attachment  of  the  synchronized  firing  mechanism.  Let  us  trace 
separately  the  expansion  of  the  facilities  for  manufacturing 
these  types. 

In  the  first  place,  the  Colt's  Company,  which  owned  the 
Browning  rights,  turned  over  to  the  Winchester  Repeating 
Arms  Company,  in  September,  1917,  the  task  of  developing 
the  drawings  and  gauges  for  the  manufacture  of  Browning 
automatic  rifles  on  a  large  scale.  The  latter  concern  executed 
this  work  splendidly.  Early  in  March,  1918,  the  Winchester 
Company  had  tooled  up  its  plant  and  turned  out  the  first 
Browning  rifles.  These  were  shipped  to  Washington  and 
demonstrated  in  the  hands  of  gunners  before  a  distinguished 
audience  of  officers  and  other  government  officials,  and  their 
great  success  assured  the  country  that  America  had  an  auto- 
matic rifle  worthy  of  her  inventive  and  manufacturing  pres- 
tige. By  the  first  of  May  the  Winchester  Company  had  turned 
out  1,200  Browning  rifles. 

The  Marlin-Rockwell  Corporation  attained  its  first  pro- 
duction of  Browning  rifles  in  June,  1918,  by  which  time  the 
Winchester  Company  had  built  about  4,000  of  them.  Before 
the  end  of  June  the  Colt's  Company  added  its  first  few  hun- 
dreds of  Browning  rifles  to  the  expanding  output.  By  the  end 
of  July  the  total  production  of  Browning  rifles  had  reached 
17,000,  produced  as  follows:  9,700  by  Winchester;   5,650 


2i8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

by  Marlin-Rockwell ;  and  1,650  by  Colt's.  Two  months  later 
this  total  had  been  doubled — the  exact  figure  being  34,500 
Browning  rifles — and  on  November  11,  1918,  when  the  flag 
fell  on  this  industrial  race,  the  Government  had  accepted 
52,238  light  Browning  rifles.  Of  these  the  Winchester  Com- 
pany had  built,  in  round  numbers,  27,000;  Marlin-Rockwell, 
16,000;  and  Colt's,  9,000. 

But  these  figures  give  only  an  indication  of  the  Browning 
rifle  program  as  it  had  expanded  up  to  the  time  hostilities 
ceased.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  our  orders  for  these 
guns  called  for  a  production  of  288,174,  and  still  further  large 
orders  were  about  to  be  placed.  As  an  illustration  of  the  size 
which  this  manufacture  would  have  attained,  we  had  com- 
pleted negotiations  with  one  concern  whereby  its  factory 
capacity  was  to  be  increased  to  produce,  by  June  of  1919, 
800  Browning  rifles  every  twenty-four  hours.  After  the  armi- 
stice was  signed  we  canceled  orders  calling  for  the  manu- 
facture of  186,000  Browning  automatic  rifles. 

Of  the  48,082  of  these  weapons  sent  overseas,  38,860  went 
in  bulk  on  supply  transports.  The  rest  constituted  the  equip- 
ment of  twelve  divisions  which  carried  their  automatic  rifles 
with  them. 

The  Colt's  Company  itself  developed  the  drawings  and 
gauges  for  the  quantity  manufacture  of  the  Browning  gun  of 
the  ground  type.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  New  Eng- 
land Westinghouse  Company  was  the  first  outside  concern 
to  begin  the  manufacture  of  these  weapons.  It  received  its 
orders  in  January,  1918.  Within  four  months  it  had  turned 
out  its  first  completed  guns,  being  the  first  company  to  deliver 
these  weapons  to  the  Government.  By  the  first  of  May  it  had 
delivered  eighty-five  heavy  Brownings.  By  the  middle  of  May 
the  Remington  Company  came  into  production  of  the  heavy 
Brownings,  The  Colt's  Company,  which  was  required  to  con- 
tinue its  production  of  Vickers  guns,  was  also  retarded  by  the 
duty  of  preparing  the  drawings  for  the  other  concerns  who  had 
contracted  to  make  heavy  Brownings;  and  this  factory,  the 
birthplace  of  the  Browning  gun,  was  not  able  to  produce  any 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 

THE  BROWNING  HEAVY  MACHINE  GUN 


Photo  from   Crown   Cork  6?  Seal  Company 

ASSEMBLING  TRIPODS  FOR  BROWNING  MACHINE  GUNS 


BROWNING  LIGHT  AUTOMATIC  RIFLE 


LEWIS  MACHINE  GUN,  GROUND  TYPE 


Fhi'lf'S  frrrn   Ordnance  Department 

HOTCHKISS  HEAVY  MACHINE  GUN 


MACHINE  GUNS  219 

until  the  end  of  June.  By  this  time  the  Westinghouse  Com- 
pany had  turned  out  more  than  2,500  heavy  Brownings,  and 
Remington  over  1,600.  By  the  end  of  July  the  production  of 
Browning  machine  guns  at  all  plants  had  reached  the  total  of 
10,000;  and  two  months  later  26,000  heavy  Brownings  were 
in  the  hands  of  the  Government.  In  the  following  six  weeks 
this  production  was  enormously  increased,  the  total  receipts 
by  the  Government  up  to  November  1 1  amounting  to  about 
42,000  heavy  Browning  guns.  In  round  numbers  Westing- 
house  produced  30,000  of  these.  Remington  11,000,  and 
Colt's  about  1,000.  We  shipped,  in  all,  30,582  heavy  Brown- 
ings to  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces,  27,894  going  on 
supply  ships  and  the  rest  in  the  hands  of  twelve  divisions  of 
troops. 

These  shipments  actually  put  in  France,  before  the  armistice 
was  signed,  enough  heavy  Brownings  to  equip  completely  all 
the  American  troops  on  French  soil.  But  when  these  supplies 
were  arriving  the  fight  against  the  retreating  German  Army 
was  at  its  hottest,  and  there  was  no  time  for  the  troops  on  the 
line  to  exchange  their  British-built  and  French-built  machine 
guns  for  Brownings  or  to  replace  their  Chauchat  automatic 
rifles  with  light  Brownings,  of  which  there  was  also  an  ample 
supply  in  France.  A  report  of  the  Chief  Ordnance  Officer, 
American  Expeditionary  Forces,  as  of  February  15,  1919, 
shows  that,  except  for  anti-aircraft  use,  the  Vickers  and 
Hotchkiss  machine  guns  with  our  troops  had  been  almost 
entirely  replaced  by  heavy  Brownings,  and  that  the  Chauchat 
automatic  rifles  had  been  replaced  by  light  Brownings. 

When  the  armistice  was  signed  we  had  placed  orders  for 
110,000  heavy  Brownings  and  were  contemplating  still  fur- 
ther orders.  We  later  reduced  these  orders  by  37,500  guns. 

Because  the  Marlin  aircraft  gun  had  performed  so  satis- 
factorily, and  because  our  facilities  for  the  manufacture  of 
this  weapon  were  large,  the  production  of  the  Browning  air- 
craft guns  had  not  been  pushed  to  the  limit.  Had  it  been,  it 
would  have  interfered  with  the  production  of  the  Marlin  gun 
at  a  time  when  it  was  most  imperative  to  obtain  an  immediate 


220  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

supply  of  fixed  synchronized  aircraft  guns.  Only  a  few  hun- 
dred Browning  aircraft  guns  had  been  completed  before  the 
close  of  the  fighting.  In  its  tests  and  performances  this  weapon 
had  been  speeded  up  to  a  rate  of  fire  of  from  1,000  to  1,300 
shots  a  minute,  which  far  surpassed  the  performances  of  any 
synchronized  gun  then  in  use  on  the  western  front. 

By  the  spring  of  1918  it  became  evident  that  we  should 
require  a  special  machine  gun  for  use  in  our  tanks.  Several 
makes  were  considered  for  this  purpose  and  finally  discarded 
for  one  reason  or  another.  The  ultimate  decision  was  to  take 
7,250  Marlin  aircraft  guns  which  were  available  and  adapt 
them  to  tank  service  by  the  addition  of  sights,  aluminum  heat 
radiators,  and  handgrips  and  triggers.  The  rebuilding  of 
these  guns  at  the  Marlin-Rockwell  plant,  when  the  armistice 
was  signed  was  progressing  at  a  rate  that  ensured  the  adequate 
equipment  of  the  first  American-built  tanks. 

Meanwhile  the  Ordnance  Department  undertook  the  pro- 
duction of  a  Browning  tank  machine  gun.  This  gun  was  devel- 
oped by  taking  a  heavy  Browning  water-cooled  gun,  eliminat- 
ing the  water  jacket,  substituting  an  air-cooled  barrel  of  heavy 
construction,  and  adding  handgrips  and  sights.  The  work  was 
begun  in  September,  1918,  and  the  completed  model  was 
delivered  by  the  end  of  October.  Before  the  armistice  was 
signed  five  sample  guns  had  been  built,  demonstrated  at  the 
Tank  Corps  training  camps,  and  unanimously  approved  by 
officers  of  the  Tank  Corps  designated  to  test  it.  After  a  test  in 
France,  their  report  stated :  "The  gun  is  by  far  the  best  weapon 
for  tank  use  that  is  now  known,  and  the  Department  is  to  be 
congratulated  upon  its  development."  An  order  for  40,000 
Browning  tank  guns  was  given  to  the  Westinghouse  Company. 
This  concern,  already  equipped  for  the  manufacture  of  heavy 
Browning  guns,  was  scheduled  to  start  its  deliveries  in  Decem- 
ber, 1918,  and  to  turn  out  7,000  tank  guns  a  month  after 
January  1,  1919.  After  the  signing  of  the  armistice  the  order 
was  cut  down  to  approximately  1,800  guns. 

After  the  entrance  of  the  United  States  into  the  war  the 
armies  on  both  sides  developed  a  new  type  of  machine  gun 


MACHINE  GUNS  221 

fighting,  which  consisted  in  indirect  firing,  or  laying  down 
barrages  of  machine  gun  bullets.  This  required  the  develop- 
ment of  tripods,  clinometers  for  laying  angles  of  elevation, 
and  other  special  equipment;  and  speedy  progress  was  being 
made  in  the  quantity  production  of  this  materiel  when  the  war 
came  to  an  end. 

In  a  complete  machine  gun  program,  not  only  must  the 
guns  themselves  be  built,  but  they  must  be  fully  equipped 
with  tripods,  extra  magazines,  carts  for  carrying  both  guns  and 
ammunition,  feed  belts  of  various  types,  belt-loading  ma- 
chines, observation  and  fire  control  instruments,  and  numerous 
other  accessories,  the  manufacture  of  which  is  absolutely  essen- 
tial, but  usually  unseen  by  the  public.  The  extent  of  our  work 
in  accessories  is  indicated  by  a  few  approximate  figures  of  de- 
liveries up  to  the  signing  of  the  armistice:  nonexpendable 
ammunition  boxes,  1,000,000;  expendable  ammunition  boxes, 
7,000;  expendable  belts,  5,000;  nonexpendable  belts,  1,000,- 
000;  belt-loading  machines,  25,000;  water  boxes,  110,000; 
machine  gun  carts,  1 7,000 ;  ammunition  carts,  1 5,000 ;  tripods, 
25,000. 

The  aircraft  machine  guns  also  required  numerous  acces- 
sories, some  of  them  highly  complicated  in  manufacture.  This 
equipment  consisted  in  part  of  special  mounts  for  the  guns, 
synchronizing  attachments,  metallic  disintegrating  link  belts, 
electric  heaters  to  keep  the  guns  warm  at  the  high  altitudes  of 
the  aviator's  battle  field,  and  many  other  smaller  items. 

Not  only  our  own  forces,  but  the  Allied  armies  as  well, 
were  enthusiastic  about  the  Browning  guns  of  both  types,  as 
soon  as  they  had  seen  them  in  action.  The  best  proof  of  this 
assertion  is  that  in  the  summer  of  1918  the  British,  Belgian, 
and  French  governments  all  made  advances  to  us  to  ascertain 
the  possibility  of  our  producing  Browning  automatic  rifles  for 
their  forces.  On  November  6,  a  few  days  before  the  end  of 
hostilities,  the  French  high  commissioner  requested  that  we 
supply  15,000  light  Browning  rifles  to  the  French  Army.  We 
would  not  make  this  arrangement  at  the  time,  because  we 
thought  it  inadvisable  to  divert  any  of  our  supplies  of  these 


222  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

guns  from  our  own  troops  until  the  spring  of  1919,  when  we 
expected  that  our  capacity  for  making  light  Brownings  would 
exceed  the  demands  of  our  own  troops.  Our  demand  for  the 
lighter  guns,  incidentally,  was  far  greater  than  we  had  origi- 
nally expected.  As  soon  as  the  Browning  rifle  was  seen  in 
action,  the  General  Staff  of  our  Expeditionary  Forces  at  once 
increased  by  50  per  cent  the  number  of  automatic  rifles 
assigned  to  each  company  of  troops,  and  we  were  manufac- 
turing to  meet  this  augmented  demand  when  the  war  ended. 
By  spring  of  1919  we  expected  to  be  furnishing  light  Brown- 
ings to  the  British  and  French  armies  as  well  as  to  our  own. 
Both  types  of  Browning  guns  proved  to  be  unqualified  suc- 
cesses in  actual  battle,  as  numerous  reports  of  our  ordnance 
officers  overseas  indicated.  The  following  report  from  an 
officer  is  typical  of  numerous  other  official  descriptions  of  these 
weapons  in  battle  use: 

The  guns  [heavy  Brownings]  went  into  the  front  line  for  the  first 
time  in  the  night  of  September  13.  The  sector  was  quiet  and  the  guns 
were  practically  not  used  at  all  until  the  advance,  starting  September 
26.  In  the  action  which  followed,  the  guns  were  used  on  several  occa- 
sions for  overhead  fire,  one  company  firing  10,000  rounds  per  gun  into 
a  wood  in  which  there  were  enemy  machine-gun  nests,  at  a  range  of 
2,000  meters.  Although  the  conditions  were  extremely  unfavorable  for 
machine  guns  on  account  of  rain  and  mud,  the  guns  performed  well. 
Machine-gun  officers  reported  that  during  the  engagement  the  guns 
came  up  to  the  fullest  expectations  and,  even  though  covered  with  rust 
and  using  muddy  ammunition,  they  functioned  whenever  called  upon  to 
do  so. 

After  the  division  had  been  relieved,  seventeen  guns  from  one  com- 
pany were  sent  in  for  my  inspection.  One  of  these  had  been  struck  by 
shrapnel,  which  punctured  the  water  jacket.  All  of  the  guns  were  com- 
pletely coated  with  mud  and  rust  on  the  outside,  but  the  mechanism  was 
fairly  clean.  Without  touching  them  or  cleaning  them  in  any  way, 
except  to  run  a  rod  through  the  bore,  a  belt  of  250  rounds  was  fired 
from  each  without  a  single  stoppage  of  any  kind. 

It  can  be  concluded  from  the  try-out  in  this  division  that  the  gun  in 
its  operation  and  functioning  when  handled  by  men  in  the  field  is  a 
success. 

The  Browning  automatic  rifles  were  also  highly  praised  by 


MACHINE  GUNS  223 

our  officers  who  had  to  use  them.  Although  these  guns  re- 
ceived hard  usage,  being  on  the  front  for  days  at  a  time  in 
the  rain,  when  the  gunners  had  little  opportunity  to  clean 
them,  they  invariably  functioned  well. 

On  November  1 1  we  had  built  52,238  Browning  automatic 
rifles  in  this  country.  We  had  bought  29,000  Chauchats  from 
the  French.  Without  providing  replacement  guns  or  reserves, 
this  was  a  sufficient  number  to  equip  over  a  hundred  divisions 
with  768  guns  to  the  division.  This  meant  light  machine  guns 
enough  for  a  field  army  of  3,500,000  men.  Of  heavy  machine 
guns  we  had  at  the  signing  of  the  armistice  3,340  of  the  Hotch- 
kiss  make,  9,237  Vickers,  and  41,804  Brownings,  or  a  total  of 
54,627  heavy  machine  guns — enough  to  equip  the  two  hun- 
dred divisions  of  an  army  of  7,000,000  men,  not  figuring  in 
reserve  weapons.  The  daily  maximum  production  of  Brown- 
ing rifles  reached  706  before  our  manufacturing  efforts  were 
suddenly  stopped,  and  that  of  Browning  heavy  machine  guns 
575.  At  the  peak  of  our  production  a  total  of  1,794  machine 
guns  and  automatic  rifles  of  all  types  was  produced  within  a 
period  of  twenty-four  hours.  Our  average  monthly  output  for 
July,  August,  and  September,  1918,  was  27,270  machine  guns 
and  machine  rifles  of  all  types.  The  average  monthly  produc- 
tion of  France  was  at  this  time  12,126  and  that  of  Great 
Britain  10,947.  Our  total  production  between  April  6,  1917, 
and  November  11,  1918,  was  181,662  machine  guns  and 
machine  rifles,  as  against  229,238  by  France  and  181,404  by 
England  in  that  same  period. 

One  of  the  important  contributions  to  the  success  of  the 
machine  gun  program  was  the  cordial  spirit  of  cooperation 
which  the  War  Department  met  from  the  machine  gun  manu- 
facturers. Competitive  commercial  advantages  weighed  not 
at  all  against  the  national  need,  and  the  Department  found 
itself  possessed  of  a  group  of  enthusiastic  and  loyal  partners 
with  whom  it  could  attack  the  vast  problem  of  machine  gun 
supply.  Without  these  partners  and  this  spirit,  the  problem 
could  not  have  been  solved.  The  United  States,  starting  almost 
from  the  zero  point,  developed  in  little  more  than  a  year  a 


224  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

machine  gun  production  greater  than  that  of  any  other  coun- 
try in  the  world,  although  some  of  the  other  countries  had  been 
fighting  a  desperate  war  for  three  years  and  building  machine 
guns  to  the  limit  of  their  capacity. 


c 

Acceptances 

0/  Automatic  Arms>  by  Months,  in  United  States  and  Canada  {on  United 
Slates  Army  Orders  Only) 

To 
Inn., 

igiS 

Tout 

n'9 

Total 

Jan.     Feb.    Mar.      Apr.      May      June      July       Aug.      Sept.       Get.      Nov. 

Dee. 

Browning  heavy 
Vickm  field     . 
Colt  .... 
Lewis  field  .     . 
Lewis  caliber  .303 

0         0         0         12       923     3.620     4,33y     9,182     8.838    14.&39     6,6j4 
l/ai      9J1     1J86      tM'      1.208      1J49      lj6s        7*        381         103           0 

191          0000000000 

9Jl6 

56,608 
12,125 

2316 

15,893 

12,125 
2316 
2,500 

Aircraft  machine  gu 
Browning     .      . 

Lewis  fle.ibie  '. 

Viekers  ii-mm. 

:     «6 

000           0           0           0           0           0           0        211        363 
3.134    33io    3419      f.750     6.2JO        2]9      6.3J6     7.269      1,691          JO           0 
83i          9          0     4,i32        668     6J03     4,340     446;      J,I04     4.362     3,930 

000           0           0          71        263          95        2J4        117         161 

6 
5499 
''276 

580 

38,000 

2476 
1,138 

1«24 

1,611 
38,000 

2,6j8 

Tank  maehint  guns 
Browning     .      . 

I 

000           0           0           0           0        103           9        316        460 

582 

.J- 

1,802 
1,176 

1** 
2,646 

Automatic  nfits 
Browning  ligKt 

0 

0        ij       S48        363      1,822      3*6     8.196    12,!17      6.896    13,687     n.j68 

10,672 

69,960 

32,165 

■  02,125 

Airplane  cannon 

mo,or  »™on 

.      .                   0 

00000000000 

0 

0 

■  00 

■  00 

Tool  .     .     . 

■     .          7.7SS 

J,28i    4,82s    saSi    12,298    10.870    14,744    24,9J6    34420    23480    34.060    23,312 

27,773 

229,130 

55410 

284,540 

•  Modified  (ram  .ircreft  gur.. 

r 

CHAPTER  XI 
SERVICE  RIFLES 

IN  the  nineteen  months  of  American  belligerency  we  sent 
to  France  upward  of  two  million  soldiers.  Each  rifleman 
among  them,  as  he  stepped  aboard  his  transport,  carried 
his  own  gun.  This  weapon,  which  was  to  be  his  comrade  and 
best  friend  in  the  perilous  months  to  come,  was  an  American 
rifle,  a  rifle  at  least  the  equal  of  any  in  use  by  soldiers  of  other 
nations,  a  rifle  manufactured  in  an  American  plant.  It  may 
have  been  one  of  the  dependable  Springfield  rifles.  More 
likely,  it  was  a  modified  1917  Enfield,  built  from  a  design 
fundamentally  British,  but  modified  for  greater  efficiency  by 
American  ordnance  officers  after  the  actual  entry  of  the 
United  States  into  the  great  struggle.  When  it  is  considered 
that  even  a  nation  of  such  military  genius  as  France,  espe- 
cially skilled  as  she  was  in  the  construction  of  military  weap- 
ons, was  three  years  in  developing  her  full  ordnance  program, 
even  though  working  at  top  speed,  the  rifle  production  of  the 
United  States  stands  out  as  one  of  the  feats  of  the  war. 

The  story  of  the  modified  1917  Enfield,  the  rifle  on  which  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces  based  their  chief  dependence, 
is  an  inspiring  chapter  in  our  munitions  history.  It  is  a  story 
of  triumph  over  difficulties,  of  American  productive  genius 
at  its  best.  To  get  this  weapon,  we  temporarily  forsook  the 
most  accurate  army  rifle  the  world  had  ever  seen  and  straight- 
way produced  in  great  quantities  another  one,  a  new  model, 
that  proved  itself  to  be  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  serviceable  for 
the  kind  of  warfare  in  which  we  were  to  engage. 

America,  since  the  days  of  Daniel  Boone  a  nation  of  crack 
shots,  was  naturally  the  home  of  good  rifles.  Hence  it  is  per- 
haps not  surprising  that  the  United  States  should  have  been 


226  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  nation  to  produce  the  most  accurate  military  rifle  known 
in  its  day.  This  was  the  United  States  rifle,  model  of  1903, 
popularly  called  the  "Springfield."  The  Springfield  rifle 
had  superseded  in  our  Army  the  Krag-Jorgensen,  which  we 
had  used  in  the  Spanish-American  War.  In  that  conflict  the 
Spanish  Army  used  a  rifle  of  German  design,  the  Mauser. 
Our  ordnance  officers  at  that  time  considered  the  Krag  to  be 
a  more  accurate  weapon  than  the  Mauser.  Still,  we  were  not 
satisfied  with  the  Krag;  and,  after  several  years  of  develop- 
ment, in  1903  we  brought  out  the  Springfield,  the  most  accu- 
rate and  quickest-firing  rifle  that  had  ever  come  from  an 
arsenal. 

There  was  no  questioning  the  superiority  of  the  Springfield 
in  point  of  accuracy.  Time  after  time  we  pitted  our  army 
shooting  teams  against  those  of  other  nations  and  won  the 
international  competitions  with  the  Springfield.  We  won  the 
Olympic  shoot  of  1908  over  England,  Canada,  France, 
Sweden,  Norway,  Greece,  and  Denmark.  Again,  in  1912,  we 
won  the  Olympic  shoot  against  England,  Sweden,  South 
Africa,  France,  Norway,  Greece,  Denmark,  Russia,  and 
Austria-Hungary.  In  1912  the  Springfield  rifle,  in  the  hands 
of  Yankee  marksmen,  won  the  Pan-American  match  at 
Buenos  Aires,  and  in  1913  it  defeated  Argentina,  Canada, 
Sweden,  and  Peru.  In  all  these  matches  the  Mauser  rifle  was 
fired  by  various  teams;  but  the  Springfield  never  failed  to 
defeat  this  German  weapon,  which  it  was  to  meet  later  in  the 
fighting  of  the  World  War.  Altogether,  the  Springfield  rifle 
defeated  the  military  rifles  of  fifteen  nations  in  shooting  com- 
petitions prior  to  the  war,  and  in  1912,  at  Ottawa,  an  Ameri- 
can team  firing  Springfields  set  markmanship  records  for  800 
yards,  900  yards,  and  1,000  yards  that  have  never  been 
broken.  Much  is  to  be  said  for  the  men  behind  these  guns,  but 
due  credit  must  be  given  the  rifles  that  put  the  bullets  where 
the  marksmen  aimed. 

Such  was  the  history  of  this  splendid  arm  when  the  United 
States  neared  the  brink  of  the  great  conflict.  But  as  war  be- 
came inevitable  for  us  and  we  began  to  have  a  realization  of 


SERVICE  RIFLES  227 

the  scale  on  which  we  must  prosecute  it,  our  ordnance  officers, 
studying  the  rifle  problem,  became  persuaded  that  our  Army 
could  not  hope  to  carry  this  magnificent  weapon  to  Europe  as 
its  chief  small-arms  reliance.  A  brief  examination  of  the  indus- 
trial problem  presented  by  the  rifle  situation  in  1917  should 
make  it  clear,  even  to  a  man  unacquainted  with  machinery 
and  manufacturing,  why  it  was  humanly  impossible  to  equip 
our  troops  with  the  rifle  in  developing  which  our  ordnance 
experts  had  spent  so  many  years. 

The  Model  1903  rifle  had  been  built  in  two  factories  and 
only  two — the  Springfield  Armory,  Springfield,  Massachusetts, 
and  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal,  at  Rock  Island,  Illinois.  For  sev- 
eral years  before  1917,  our  Government  had  cut  down  its 
expenditures  for  the  manufacture  of  small  arms  and  ammuni- 
tion. The  Rock  Island  Arsenal  had  ceased  its  production  of 
Springfields  altogether,  and  the  output  of  rifles  from  the 
Springfield  Armory  had  been  greatly  reduced.  This  meant 
that  the  skilled  artisans  once  employed  in  the  manufacture 
of  Springfield  rifles  had  been  scattered  to  the  four  winds. 
When,  in  early  1917,  it  became  necessary  to  speed  up  the  pro- 
duction of  rifles  to  the  limit  in  these  two  establishments,  those 
in  charge  of  the  undertaking  found  that  they  could  recover 
only  a  few  of  the  old  trained  employees.  Yet,  even  when  we 
had  restaffed  these  two  factories  with  skilled  men,  their  com- 
bined production  at  top  speed  could  not  begin  to  supply  the 
quantity  of  rifles  which  our  impending  Army  would  need. 
It  was  obviously  necessary  that  we  procure  rifles  from  private 
factories. 

Why,  then,  was  not  the  manufacture  of  Springfields  ex- 
tended to  the  private  plants'?  Some  ante-bellum  effort,  indeed, 
had  been  made  looking  to  the  production  of  Springfields  in 
commercial  plants,  but  lack  of  funds  had  prevented  more  than 
the  outlining  of  the  scheme. 

Any  high-powered  rifle  is  an  intricate  product.  The  1917 
Enfield  is  relatively  simple  in  construction;  yet  the  soldier  can 
dismount  his  Enfield  into  eighty-six  parts,  and  some  of  these 
parts  are  made  up  of  several  component  pieces.  Many  of  them 


228  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

must  be  made  with  great  precision,  gauged  with  microscopic 
nicety,  and  finished  with  unusual  accuracy.  To  produce  Spring- 
fields  on  a  grand  scale  in  private  plants  would  imply  the  use 
of  thousands  of  gauges,  jigs,  dies,  and  other  small  tools  neces- 
sary for  such  a  manufacture,  as  well  as  that  of  great  quantities 
of  special  machines.  None  of  this  equipment  for  Springfield 
rifle  manufacture  had  been  provided;  yet  all  of  it  had  to  be 
supplied  to  the  commercial  plants  before  they  could  turn  out 
rifles.  We  should  have  had  to  spend  preliminary  months,  or 
even  years,  in  building  up  an  adequate  manufacturing  equip- 
ment for  Springfields,  the  while  our  boys  in  France  were 
using  what  odds  and  ends  of  rifle  equipment  the  Government 
might  be  able  to  purchase  for  them — except  for  a  condition, 
present  in  our  small-arms  industry  in  early  1917,  that  now 
seems  to  have  been  well-nigh  providential. 

Among  other  governments,  both  the  British  and  the  Russian, 
in  the  emergency  of  1914  and  1915,  had  turned  to  the  United 
States  to  supplement  their  sources  of  rifle  supply  while  they, 
particularly  the  British,  were  building  up  their  home  manu- 
facturing capacity.  Five  American  concerns  were  engaged  in 
the  production  of  rifles  on  these  large  foreign  orders  when  we 
entered  the  war.  Three  of  them  were  the  Winchester  Repeat- 
ing Arms  Company,  of  New  Haven,  Connecticut ;  the  Reming- 
tion  Arms-Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Company,  of  Ilion,  New 
York;  and  the  Remington  Arms  Company  of  Delaware  at  its 
enormous  war-contract  factory  at  Eddystone,  Pennsylvania, 
later  a  part  of  the  Midvale  Steel  &  Ordnance  Company.  These 
concerns  had  developed  their  manufacturing  facilities  on  a 
huge  scale  to  turn  out  rifles  for  the  British  Government.  By 
the  spring  of  1917  England  had  built  up  her  own  manufac- 
turing facilities  at  home,  and  her  last  American  contracts  were 
nearing  completion.  Here  at  hand,  then,  was  a  huge  capacity 
which,  added  to  our  government  arsenals,  could  turn  out  every 
rifle  the  American  Army  would  require,  regardless  of  how 
many  troops  we  were  to  put  into  the  field. 

But  what  of  the  gun  that  these  plants  were  making — the 
British  Enfield  rifle"?  As  soon  as  war  became  a  certainty  for  us, 


SERVICE  RIFLES  229 

the  Ordnance  Department  sent  its  best  rifle  experts  to  these 
private  plants  to  study  the  British  Enfield  in  detail.  They 
returned  to  headquarters  without  enthusiasm  for  it;  in  fact, 
regarding  it  as  a  weapon  not  good  enough  for  an  American 
soldier. 

A  glance  at  the  history  of  the  British  Enfield  will  make 
clear  some  of  our  objections  to  it.  Until  the  advent  of  the  1903 
Springfield,  the  German  Mauser  had  occupied  the  summit  of 
military-rifle  supremacy.  From  1903  until  the  advent  of  the 
World  War  these  two  rifles,  the  Mauser  and  the  Springfield, 
were  easily  the  two  leaders.  The  British  Army  had  been 
equipped  with  the  Lee-Enfield  for  some  years  prior  to  the 
outbreak  of  the  World  War,  but  the  British  ordnance  authori- 
ties had  been  making  vigorous  efforts  to  improve  this  weapon. 
The  Enfield  was  at  a  disadvantage  principally  in  its  ammuni- 
tion. It  fired  a  .303-caliber  cartridge  with  a  rimmed  head. 
From  a  ballistic  standpoint  this  cartridge  was  virtually 
obsolete. 

In  1914  a  new,  improved  Enfield,  known  at  the  Pattern  '14, 
was  brought  out  in  England,  and  the  British  Government  was 
on  the  point  of  adopting  it  when  the  World  War  broke  out. 
This  was  to  be  a  gun  of  .276  caliber  and  was  to  shoot  rimless, 
or  cannelured,  cartridges  similar  to  the  standard  United  States 
ammunition.  The  war  threw  the  whole  British  improved  En- 
field project  on  the  scrap  heap.  England  was  no  more  equipped 
to  build  the  improved  Enfields  than  we  were  to  produce 
Springfields  in  our  private  plants.  The  British  arsenals  and 
industrial  plants  and  ammunition  factories  were  equipped  to 
turn  out,  in  the  quantities  demanded  by  the  war,  only  the  old 
"short  Enfield"  and  its  antiquated  .303  rimmed  cartridges. 

Now,  England  was  obliged  to  turn  to  outside  sources  for  an 
additional  rifle  supply,  and  in  the  United  States  she  found 
the  three  firms  named  above  willing  to  undertake  large  rifle 
contracts.  Having  to  build  up  factor)^  equipment  anew  in  the 
United  States  for  this  work,  England  found  that  she  might  as 
well  have  the  American  plants  manufacture  the  improved  En- 
field as  the  older  type.  To  produce  the  1914  Enfield  without 


230  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

change  in  America  and  the  older-type  Enfield  in  England 
would  have  complicated  the  British  rifle-ammunition  manufac- 
ture, since  these  rifles  used  cartridges  of  different  sizes  and 
types.  Accordingly,  the  British  selected  the  improved  Enfield 
for  the  American  manufacture,  but  modified  it  to  receive  the 
.303  rimmed  cartridges. 

This  was  the  gun,  then,  that  we  found  being  produced  at 
New  Haven,  Ilion,  and  Eddystone  in  the  spring  of  1917.  The 
rifle  had  many  of  the  characteristics  of  the  1903  Springfield, 
but  it  was  not  so  good  as  the  Springfield  in  its  proportions,  and 
its  sights  lacked  some  of  the  refinements  to  which  Americans 
were  accustomed.  Even  so,  it  was  a  weapon  obviously  superior 
to  either  the  French  or  the  Russian  rifle.  The  ammunition 
which  it  fired  was  out  of  the  question  for  us.  Not  only  was  it 
inferior,  but,  since  we  expected  to  continue  to  build  the  Spring- 
fields  at  the  government  arsenals,  we  should,  if  we  adopted  the 
Enfield  as  it  was,  be  forced  to  produce  two  sizes  of  rifle  ammu- 
nition, a  condition  leading  to  delay  and  unsatisfactory  output. 
The  rifle  had  been  designed  originally  for  rimless  ammunition 
and  later  modified;  therefore  it  could  readily  be  modified  again 
to  shoot  our  standard  .30-caliber  Springfield  cartridges. 

It  may  be  seen  that  the  Ordnance  Department  had  open  be- 
fore it  three  courses.  It  could  spend  the  time  to  equip  private 
plants  to  manufacture  Springfields,  in  which  case  the  Ameri- 
can rifle  program  would  be  hopelessly  delayed;  it  could  get 
guns  immediately  by  contracting  for  the  production  of  Brit- 
ish .303  Enfields,  in  which  case  the  American  troops  would 
carry  inferior  rifles  with  them  to  France;  or  it  could  take  a  rela- 
tively brief  time,  accept  the  criticism  bound  to  come  from  any 
delay,  however  brief  such  delay  might  be  and  however  justi- 
fied by  the  practical  conditions,  and  modify  the  Enfield  to 
take  our  ammunition,  in  which  case  the  American  troops  would 
be  adequately  equipped  with  a  good  weapon.  The  decision  to 
modify  the  Enfield  was  one  of  the  great  executive  choices  of 
the  war.  All  honor  to  the  men  who  made  it. 

The  three  concerns  which  had  been  manufacturing  the 
British  weapon  conceded  that  it  should  be  changed  to  take 


SERVICE  RIFLES  231 

the  American  ammunition.  Each  company  sent  to  the  Spring- 
field Armory  on  May  10,  1917,  a  model  modified  rifle  to  be 
tested.  The  test  showed  that  the  weapons  were  still  unsatis- 
factory, principally  because  they  had  not  been  standardized. 
Standardization  was  regarded  as  an  essential  for  two  reasons, 
one  of  them  a  matter  of  practical  tactics  in  the  field  and  the 
other  a  matter  of  speed  in  production. 

To  begin  with,  the  soldier  on  the  battle  field  is  his  own  rifle 
repairman.  His  unit  usually  has  on  hand  a  supply  of  weapons 
damaged  or  out  of  commission  for  one  reason  or  another.  If, 
therefore,  any  part  of  the  soldier's  rifle  is  broken  or  damaged, 
he  can  go  to  the  stock  of  unused  guns  on  hand  and  take  from 
another  rifle  the  part  which  he  requires,  and  it  will  fit  his 
gun,  provided  there  has  been  standardization  in  the  rifle  manu- 
facture at  home.  But  if  the  guns  have  not  been  standardized 
and  each  weapon  is  a  filing  and  tinkering  job  in  the  assembling 
room  of  the  factory,  then  the  soldier  in  the  field  is  not  likely  to 
be  able  to  find  a  part  that  will  fit  his  gun;  and  his  rifle,  if 
damaged,  goes  out  of  commission.  Or,  if  he  finds  a  part  which 
fits,  but  does  not  fit  perfectly,  his  gun  may  break  as  he  fires 
it,  and  he  himself  may  suffer  serious  injury.  And  standardiza- 
tion is  equally  essential  to  great  speed  in  production.  If  one 
plant  producing  rifles  encounters  a  shortage  in  any  of  the  parts, 
it  can  send  to  another  plant  and  secure  a  supply — an  advan- 
tage which  does  not  exist  imless  the  weapon  has  been  standard- 
ized. The  value  of  standardization  in  speeding  up  manufac- 
ture is  best  shown  by  the  actual  records  of  rifle  production 
during  the  war.  The  fastest  mechanic  in  any  of  the  three 
Enfield  factories  before  1917  had  set  an  assembly  record  of 
fifty  rifles  in  one  working  day  for  the  British  gun.  After  we 
had  standardized  the  Enfield  the  high  assembly  record  was  280 
rifles  a  day;  and  the  assemblers  in  the  plants  averaged  250 
rifles  a  day  when  the  work  was  well  started. 

The  Enfields  sent  to  the  Springfield  Armory  test  were  not 
standardized  at  all ;  they  were  largely  hand  fitted.  Little  or  no 
attempt  had  been  made  to  obtain  interchangeability  of  parts 
among  the  rifles  turned  out  by  the  three  plants.  Even  the  bolt 


232  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

taken  from  one  company's  rifle  would  not  enter  the  receiver 
of  another  company's.  The  Ordnance  Department  was  con- 
fronted with  the  dilemma  of  approving  and  issuing  a  weapon 
pronounced  unsuitable  by  its  own  experts  and  thus  obtaining 
speedy  production,  or  delaying  until  interchangeability  was 
established.  It  chose  the  latter  course. 

On  July  12  a  second  set  of  rifles  had  been  tested.  These  came 
more  nearly  up  to  our  ideas  of  standardization,  but  were  still 
not  entirely  satisfactory.  Nevertheless  we  decided  to  go  ahead 
with  production  and  improve  the  standardization  as  we  went 
along.  The  Winchester  and  Ilion  plants  elected  to  start  work 
on  that  understanding,  but  Eddystone  preferred  to  wait  for 
the  final  requirements.  Ilion  afterward  decided  to  postpone 
production  until  the  final  specifications  were  adopted.  It  would 
have  been  well  if  the  same  course  had  been  followed  at  the 
Winchester  plant,  for  word  came  later  from  Europe  not  to 
send  over  rifles  of  Winchester  manufacture  of  that  period.  The 
final  drawings  of  the  standardized  and  modified  Enfield  did 
not  come  from  the  plants  until  August  18.  Six  days  later  the 
thousands  of  dimensions  had  been  carefully  checked  and 
finally  approved  by  the  ordnance  officers,  and  after  that,  pro- 
duction began  in  earnest. 

The  wisdom  of  adopting  the  Enfield  rifle  and  modifying  it 
to  meet  our  requirements  instead  of  extending  the  manufacture 
of  Springfields  was  almost  immediately  evident,  for  in  August, 
almost  as  soon  as  the  final  drawings  were  approved,  the  first 
rifles  were  delivered  to  the  Government.  This  was  possible 
because  the  modifications  which  we  adopted  did  not  require 
any  fundamental  changing  of  machinery.  The  principal  equip- 
ment of  the  plants  was  in  place  and  ready  to  begin  manufac- 
turing Enfields  at  once ;  and  while  the  changes  in  the  rifle  were 
under  discussion,  the  manufacturers  were  producing  their 
gauges  and  small  tools  as  each  modification  was  decided  upon. 
Though  we  did  not  succeed  in  attaining,  and  in  fact  did  not 
attempt  to  attain,  complete  standardization  and  interchange- 
ability  of  the  parts  of  the  Enfields,  we  did  all  that  was  prac- 


SERVICE  RIFLES  233 

ticable  in  this  direction.  Several  tests  showed  that  the  average 
of  interchangeability  was  about  95  per  cent  of  the  total  parts. 

Meanwhile  we  were  building  up  the  working  staffs  of  the 
Rock  Island  Arsenal  and  Springfield  Armory  and  speeding  the 
production  of  Springfields.  Before  the  war  ended,  the  Rock 
Island  Arsenal,  which  was  making  spare  parts  for  Springfields, 
reached  an  output  equaling  1,000  completed  rifles  a  day;  and 
the  Springfield  Armory  attained  a  high  average  of  1,500 
assembled  rifles  a  day  in  addition  to  spare  parts  equaling  100 
completed  rifles  daily. 

The  Eddystone  plant  finished  its  British  contracts  on  June  1, 
Winchester  produced  its  last  British  rifle  on  June  28,  and 
Ilion  its  last  on  July  21,  1917.  Winchester  delivered  the  first 
modified  Enfields  to  us  on  August  18,  Eddystone  on  Septem- 
ber 10,  and  Ilion  about  October  28.  Progress  in  the  rate  of 
manufacture  was  thereafter  steady.  During  the  week  ending 
February  2,  1918,  the  daily  production  of  military  rifles  in 
the  United  States  was  9,247,  of  which  7,805  were  modified 
Enfields  produced  in  the  three  private  plants,  and  1,442  were 
Springfields  built  in  the  two  arsenals.  The  total  production 
for  that  week  was  50,873  guns  of  both  types,  or  nearly  enough 
for  three  army  divisions.  In  spite  of  the  time  that  went  into 
the  standardization  of  the  Enfield  rifle,  all  troops  leaving  the 
United  States  were  armed  with  American  weapons  at  the  ports 
of  embarkation.  Ten  months  after  we  declared  war  against 
Germany  we  were  producing  in  a  week  four  times  as  many 
rifles  as  Great  Britain  had  turned  out  in  a  similar  period  after 
ten  months  of  war,  and  our  production  was  then  twice  as  large 
in  volume  as  Great  Britain  had  attained  in  the  war  up  to  that 
time.  By  the  middle  of  June,  1918,  we  had  passed  the  million 
and  one-half  mark  in  the  production  of  rifles  of  all  sorts,  this 
figure  including  over  250,000  rifles  which  had  been  built  upon 
original  contracts  placed  by  the  former  Russian  Government. 

The  production  of  Enfields  and  Springfields  during  the  war 
up  to  November  9,  1918,  amounted  to  2,506,307  guns.  Of 
these,  312,878  were  Springfield  rifles  produced  by  the  two 
government  arsenals.  We  had  started  the  war  with  a  reserve 


234  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  600,000  Springfield  rifles  on  hand,  and  we  had  in  addition, 
stored  in  our  armories  and  arsenals,  160,000  Krags.  These  last 
had  to  be  cleaned  and  considerably  repaired  before  they  could 
be  used.  From  the  Canadian  Government  we  purchased  20,000 
Ross  rifles.  The  deliveries  of  Russian  rifles  totaled  280,049. 
This  gave  us  a  total  equipment  of  3,575,356  rifles.  Since  ap- 
proximately one-half  the  soldiers  of  an  army,  as  armies  are 
actually  organized,  carry  rifles,  the  total  number  of  rifles  pro- 
cured by  the  Ordnance  Department  was  sufficient  to  arm,  both 
for  fighting  and  for  training,  an  army  of  7,000,000  men,  if  we 
take  no  account  of  reserve  and  maintenance  rifles. 

The  Enfield  became,  then,  the  dominant  rifle  of  our  military 
effort.  Its  modified  firing  mechanism  could  use  the  superior 
Springfield  cartridges  with  their  great  accuracy.  The  Enfield 
sights,  with  the  peep  sight  close  to  the  eye,  gave  even  greater 
quickness  of  aim  than  the  Springfield  sights  afforded.  In  this 
respect  the  weapon  was  far  superior  to  the  Mauser,  which  was 
the  main  dependence  of  the  German  Army.  To  a  weapon  that 
made  at  first  but  scant  appeal  to  our  ordnance  officers,  we 
added  in  a  few  weeks  such  improvements  and  modifications 
as  made  the  1917  Enfield  a  gun  that,  for  the  short-range  fight- 
ing in  Europe,  compared  favorably  with  the  Springfield  and 
was  to  the  Allied  cause  a  distinct  contribution  which  America 
could  claim  as  substantially  her  own. 

Standardization  not  only  made  possible  the  speed  with 
which  our  rifles  were  ultimately  produced,  but,  together  with 
the  care  of  the  Government  in  purchasing  raw  materials  and 
in  drawing  contracts,  it  saved  a  great  deal  of  money  in  the  cost 
of  these  weapons.  The  modified  Enfields  cost  the  Government 
approximately  $26  each,  a  price  considerably  under  that  which 
the  British  paid  for  their  American-built  Enfields. 

Both  the  Springfield  and  the  1917  Enfield  rifle  possessed 
advantages  of  accuracy  and  speed  of  fire  over  the  German 
Mauser.  It  is  true  that  the  Mauser  fired  a  heavier  bullet  than 
that  of  our  standard  ammunition  and  sent  it  with  somewhat 
greater  velocity;  but  at  the  longer  fighting  ranges  the  Mauser 
bullet  is  not  so  accurate  as  the  United  States  bullet.  Due  to  its 


SERVICE  RIFLES  235 

peculiar  shape,  the  Mauser  bullet  is  apt  to  tumble  end  over 
end  at  long  ranges — "key-holing,"  the  marksmen  call  it — 
particularly  when  the  wind  blows  across  the  range.  Such 
tumbling  causes  a  bullet  to  curve  as  a  baseball  thrown  by  a 
good  pitcher,  destroying  its  accuracy. 

Early  in  our  fighting  with  Germany  we  captured  Mauser 
rifles  and  hastened  to  compare  them  with  the  Springfields  and 
modified  Enfields.  We  found  in  the  American  rifles  a  marked 
superiority  in  the  rapidity  of  fire,  the  quickness  and  ease  of 
sighting,  and  in  the  accuracy  of  shots  fired.  The  accuracy  was 
due  not  only  to  our  standard  Springfield  ammunition,  but  also 
to  the  greater  mechanical  accuracy  in  the  finish  of  the  chamber 
and  bore  of  the  American  rifles.  The  rapidity  of  fire  of  the 
American  guns  was  due  to  the  position  and  shape  of  the  bolt 
handle,  the  movable  mechanism  with  which  the  soldier  ejects 
a  spent  shell  and  throws  in  a  fresh  one. 

How  we  developed  this  bolt  handle  is  an  interesting  story  in 
itself.  In  1903,  when  we  brought  out  the  first  modem  Spring- 
field rifle,  we  decided  to  abandon  the  old  carbine  which  had 
been  carried  by  our  cavalry  regiments  and,  by  making  a  rifle 
with  a  comparatively  short  barrel,  to  furnish  a  gun  which  could 
be  used  by  both  infantry  and  cavalry.  The  original  bolt  handle 
of  the  Springfield,  like  the  one  on  the  present  Mauser,  had  pro- 
jected horizontally  from  the  side  of  the  chamber.  It  was  found 
that  this  protuberance  did  not  fit  well  in  the  saddle  holster  of 
the  cavalryman,  but  jammed  the  side  of  the  rifle  against  the 
leather  of  the  holster,  with  frequent  injury  to  the  rifle  sight. 
For  this  reason,  primarily,  the  rifle  designers  bent  the  bolt 
handle  down  and  back.  This  modification  incidentally  brought 
the  bolt  handle  much  nearer  to  the  soldier's  hand  as  he  fingered 
the  trigger.  The  Enfield  design  had  carried  this  development 
even  farther,  so  that  the  bolt  handle  was  practically  right  at 
the  trigger,  and  the  rifleman's  hand  was  ready  to  pull  the 
trigger  the  instant  after  it  had  thrown  in  a  new  cartridge. 

Let  us  see  what  effect  this  design  of  the  bolt  handle  had 
in  the  recent  war.  The  Mauser  still  clung  to  the  old  horizontal 
bolt  handle,  well  away  from  the  trigger  grip.  Some  of  our  best 


236  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

riflemen  practiced  with  the  captured  Mausers  and,  firing  at 
top  speed  with  them,  could  not  bring  the  rate  of  shooting  any- 
where nearly  up  to  the  marks  set  by  the  Enfields  and  Spring- 
fields.  One  enthusiast  has  even  maintained  that  the  speed  of 
the  Mauser  is  not  over  50  per  cent  of  that  of  the  1917  Ameri- 
can rifle,  but  this  may  be  an  underestimate.  On  such  a  basis, 
under  battle  conditions  with  equal  numbers  of  men  on  a  side, 
the  Americans  had  in  effect  two  rifles  to  the  Germans'  one. 
To  put  it  another  way:  By  bending  back  the  bolt  handle  we 
had  placed  two  men  on  the  firing  line  where  there  was  only  one 
before;  and  the  added  man  required  no  shelter,  clothing, 
rations,  water,  or  pay.  Although  he  sometimes  needed  repair- 
ing, he  did  not  get  sick,  nor  did  he  ever  become  an  economic 
burden  or  draw  a  pension.  His  only  added  cost  to  the  Govern- 
ment was  an  increased  consumption  of  cartridges. 

When  American  troops  were  in  the  heat  of  the  fighting  in 
the  summer  of  1918,  the  German  Government  sent  a  protest 
through  a  neutral  agency  to  our  Government,  asserting  that 
our  men  were  using  shotguns  against  German  troops  in  the 
trenches.  The  allegation  was  true;  but  our  State  Department 
replied  that  the  use  of  such  weapons  was  not  forbidden  by  the 
Geneva  Convention,  as  the  Germans  had  asserted.  Manufac- 
tured primarily  for  the  purpose  of  arming  guards  placed  over 
German  prisoners,  these  shotguns  were  undoubtedly  in  some 
instances  carried  into  the  actual  fighting.  The  Ordnance  De- 
partment procured  some  30,000  to  40,000  shotguns  of  the 
short-barrel  or  sawed-off  type,  ordering  them  from  the  regular 
commercial  manufacturers.  The  shell  provided  for  these  guns 
each  contained  a  charge  of  nine  heavy  buckshot,  a  combination 
likely  to  have  murderous  effect  in  close  fighting. 

Such  was  the  rifle  record  of  this  Government  in  the  war.  The 
Americans  carried  into  battle  the  best  rifles  used  in  the  war, 
and  America's  industry  produced  these  weapons  in  the  emer- 
gency at  a  rate  which  armed  our  soldiers  as  rapidly  as  they 
could  be  trained  for  fighting.  Success  in  such  a  task  looked 
almost  impossible  at  the  start;  but  that  it  was  attained  should 
forever  be  a  source  of  gratification  to  the  American  people. 


SERVICE  RIFLES 


CHAPTER  XII 
PISTOLS  AND  REVOLVERS 

THE  American  pistol  was  one  of  the  successes  of  the 
war.  For  several  years  before  the  war  came  the  Ord- 
nance Department  had  been  collaborating  with  private 
manufacturers  to  develop  the  automatic  pistol ;  but  none  of  our 
officers  realized,  until  the  supreme  test  came,  what  an  effective 
weapon  the  Colt  .45  would  be  in  the  hand-to-hand  fighting  of 
the  trenches.  In  our  isolation  we  had  suspected,  perhaps,  that 
the  bayonet  and  such  new  weapons  as  the  modem  hand  grenade 
had  encroached  upon  the  field  of  the  pistol  and  revolver.  We 
were  soon  to  discover  our  mistake.  In  the  hands  of  a  deter- 
mined American  soldier  the  pistol  proved  to  be  a  weapon  of 
great  execution,  and  it  was  properly  feared  by  the  German 
troops. 

We  had  long  been  a  nation  of  pistol  shooters,  we  Ameri- 
cans, but  not  until  the  year  1911  did  we  develop  a  pistol  of 
the  accuracy  and  rapidity  of  fire  demanded  by  our  ordnance 
experts.  The  nations  of  Europe  had  neglected  this  valuable 
arm  almost  altogether,  regarding  it  principally  as  a  military 
ornament  which  only  officers  should  carry.  The  result  of 
Europe's  neglect  was  that  the  small-caliber  revolvers  of  the 
Germans  and  even  of  the  French  and  English  were  toys  in 
comparison  with  the  big  Colts  that  armed  the  American 
soldiers. 

America  owed  the  Colt  .45  to  the  experiences  of  our  fighters 
in  the  Philippines,  and  to  the  inventive  genius  of  John  Brown- 
ing of  machine  gun  fame.  In  the  earlier  Philippine  campaigns 
our  troops  used  a  .38-caliber  pistol.  Our  soldiers  observed  that 
the  tough  tribesmen,  when  they  were  hit  with  these  bullets  and 
even  seriously  wounded,  frequently  kept  on  fighting  for  some 


Photo  from.   Ordi.^  ::-u-nt 

STRAIGHTENING  RIFLE  BARRELS 


WALNUT  LOGS  TO  BE  MADE  INTO  RIFLE  STOCKS 


Photo  from  Caron  Brothers 

PART  OF  FACTORY  MAKING  PISTOLS  FOR  ARMY 


thill'    tri'tii    Colt's  Patent  Firearms   M  aiiiij  ,i.  tunn./    (  imjtany 

MACHINING  ROUGH  PISTOL  CASTINGS 


PISTOLS  AND  REVOLVERS  239 

time.  What  was  needed  was  a  hand  weapon  that  would  put 
the  adversary  out  of  fighting  the  instant  he  was  hit,  whether 
fatally  or  not.  We  therefore  increased  the  caliber  of  the  auto- 
matic pistol  to  .45  and  slowed  down  the  bullet  so  that  it  tore 
flesh  instead  of  making  a  clean  perforation.  These  improve- 
ments gave  the  missile  the  impact  of  a  sledge  hammer,  and  a 
man  hit  went  down  every  time. 

Moreover,  in  this  development  great  improvement  had  been 
made  in  the  accuracy  of  the  weapon,  the  1911  Colt  being  the 
straightest-shooting  pistol  ever  produced  in  this  country.  Even 
the  best  of  the  older  automatics  and  revolvers  were  accurate 
only  in  the  hands  of  expert  marksmen.  But  any  average  sol- 
dier with  average  training  can  hit  what  he  shoots  at  with  a 
Colt.  The  improvements  in  the  automatic  features  brought  it 
to  the  stage  where  it  could  be  fired  by  a  practiced  man  twenty- 
one  times  in  twelve  seconds.  In  this  operation  the  recoil  of  each 
discharge  ejects  the  empty  shell  and  loads  in  a  fresh  one. 

Only  a  few  men  of  each  infantry  regiment  carried  pistols 
when  our  troops  first  went  into  the  trenches.  But  in  almost  the 
first  skirmish  this  weapon  proved  its  superior  usefulness  in 
trench  fighting.  Such  incidents  as  that  of  the  single  American 
soldier  who  dispersed  or  killed  a  whole  squad  of  German 
bayoneteers  which  had  surrounded  him  struck  the  enemy  with 
fear  of  Yankee  prowess  with  the  pistol.  The  "tenderfoot's 
gun,"  as  the  westerners  used  to  call  it,  had  come  to  its  own. 

By  midsummer  of  1917  the  decision  had  been  made  to  sup- 
ply to  the  infantry  a  much  more  extensive  equipment  of  auto- 
matic pistols  than  had  previously  been  prescribed  by  regula- 
tions— to  build  the  pistols  by  hundreds  of  thousands  where 
we  had  been  turning  them  out  by  thousands.  In  February,  with 
war  in  sight,  realizing  the  limitations  of  our  capacity  for  pro- 
ducing pistols  at  that  time, — the  Colt  automatic  being  manu- 
factured exclusively  by  the  Colt's  Patent  Firearms  Manufac- 
turing Company,  at  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  for  a  limited 
period  by  the  Springfield  Armory, — we  took  up  with  the  Colt's 
Company  the  proposition  to  secure  drawings  and  other  engi- 
neering data  which  would  enable  us  to  extend  the  production 


240  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  this  weapon  to  other  plants.  This  work  was  in  progress 
when,  in  April,  1917,  it  was  interrupted  by  the  military 
necessity  for  calling  upon  every  energy  we  had  in  the  produc- 
tion of  rifles. 

In  order  to  supplement  the  pistol  supply,  although  the  Colt 
automatic  was  the  only  weapon  of  this  sort  approved  for  the 
Army,  the  Secretary  of  War  authorized  the  Chief  of  Ordnance 
to  secure  other  small  arms,  particularly  the  double-action  .45- 
caliber  revolver  as  manufactured  by  both  the  Colt's  Company 
and  the  Smith  &  Wesson  Company.  These  revolvers  had  been 
designed  to  use  the  standard  army  caliber-.45  pistol  cartridges. 
The  revolver  was  not  so  effective  a  weapon  as  the  automatic 
pistol,  and  it  was  adopted  in  the  emergency  only  to  make  it 
possible  to  provide  sufficient  of  these  arms  for  the  troops  at 
the  outset. 

At  the  start  of  hostilities  the  Colt's  Company  indicated  that 
it  could  tool  up  to  produce  pistols  at  the  rate  of  6,000  a  month 
by  December,  1917,  and  could  also  furnish  600  revolvers  a 
week  beginning  in  April.  As  soon  as  funds  were  available  we 
let  a  contract  to  the  Colt's  Company  for  500,000  pistols  and 
100,000  revolvers,  and  to  the  Smith  &  Wesson  Company  one 
for  100,000  revolvers.  Although  these  contracts  were  not 
placed  until  June  15,  both  concerns  had  been  working  on  the 
production  of  weapons  on  these  expected  contracts  for  many 
weeks,  in  the  certainty  that  funds  would  eventually  be 
available. 

When  the  order  came  from  France  to  increase  the  pistol 
equipment,  in  addition  to  efforts  to  increase  production  at  the 
plants  of  the  two  existing  contractors  we  made  studies  of 
numerous  other  concerns  which  might  undertake  this  class 
of  manufacture.  A  proposal  to  purchase  .38-caliber  revolvers 
as  a  supplementary  supply  was  abandoned  for  the  reason  that 
any  expansion  of  this  manufacture  and  of  that  of  the  neces- 
sary ammunition  would  be  at  the  expense  of  the  ultimate  out- 
put of  .45's  and  ammunition  therefor. 

In  December,  1917,  the  Remington  Arms-Union  Metallic 
Cartridge  Company  was  instructed  to  prepare  for  the  manu- 


PISTOLS  AND  REVOLVERS  241 

facture  of  150,000  automatics,  Colt  Model  1911,  at  a  rate  to 
reach  a  maximum  production  of  3,000  a  day.  Considerable 
difficulty  was  experienced  in  obtaining  the  necessary  draw- 
ings and  designs,  because  the  manufacture  of  these  pistols  at 
the  Colt's  Company  plant  had  been  largely  in  the  hands  of 
expert  veteran  mechanics,  who  knew  tricks  of  fitting  and  assem- 
bling not  apparent  in  the  drawings.  The  result  was  that  the 
drawings  in  existence  were  not  completely  representative  of 
the  pistols.  Finally  complete  plans  were  drawn  up  that  cov- 
ered all  details  and  gave  interchangeability  between  the  parts 
of  pistols  produced  by  the  Remington  Company  and  those  by 
the  Colt's  Company,  which  was  the  goal  sought. 

During  the  summer  of  1918,  in  order  to  fill  the  enormously 
increased  pistol  requirements  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Forces,  contracts  for  the  Colt  automatic  were  given  to  the 
National  Cash  Register  Company,  at  Dayton,  Ohio ;  the  North 
American  Arms  Company,  Quebec ;  the  Savage  Arms  Corpora- 
tion, Utica,  New  York;  Caron  Brothers,  Montreal;  the  Bur- 
roughs Adding  Machine  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan;  the 
Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Company,  New  Haven,  Connecti- 
cut; the  Lanston  Monotype  Company,  Philadelphia,  Pennsyl- 
vania; and  the  Savage  Munitions  Corporation,  San  Diego, 
California.  All  these  concerns,  none  of  which  had  ever  before 
produced  the  .45-caliber  pistol,  were  proceeding  energetically 
with  their  preparations  for  manufacture  when  the  armistice 
came  to  terminate  their  contracts.  No  pistols  were  ever  ob- 
tained from  any  except  the  Colt's  Patent  Firearms  Manufac- 
turing Company  and  the  Remington  Arms-Union  Metallic 
Cartridge  Company. 

Difficulty  was  experienced  in  securing  machinery  to  check 
the  walnut  grip  for  the  pistols,  and  to  avoid  delay  in  pro- 
duction the  Ordnance  Department  authorized  the  use  of  bake- 
lite  for  pistol  grips  in  all  the  new  plants  which  were  to  manu- 
facture the  gun.  Bakelite  is  a  substitute  for  hard  rubber  or 
amber,  invented  by  the  eminent  chemist.  Dr.  L.  H.  Baekeland. 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  Army  owned  approximately 
75,000  .45-caliber  automatic  pistols.  At  the  signing  of  the 


242  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

armistice  there  had  been  produced  and  accepted  since  April  6, 
1917,  a  total  of  643,755  pistols  and  revolvers.  The  produc- 
tion of  pistols  was  375,404  and  that  of  revolvers  268,351.  In 
the  four  months  prior  to  November  11,  1918,  the  average 
daily  production  of  automatic  pistols  was  1,993  ^^^  ^^  ^^' 
vol  vers  1,233.  This  was  at  the  yearly  production  rate  of 
approximately  600,000  pistols  and  370,000  revolvers.  These 
pistols  were  produced  at  an  approximate  cost  of  $15  each. 


PISTOLS  AND  REVOLVERS 


243 


s 
s 


Gm 


Oh 


■«^  a 


^  ~2 


t-s     ft 


^3 


f^c? 


1^ 


•2  <=> 


cOOOOoOo»^00OvO(SO\ 


enoooopoi^ooo*^©© 


fOOOOoOO>^000>^00 
—    O    ^O    >^'^v/-v>^>^>^.  r^o    O 


ooooooooooooo 
ooooooooooooo 

OjrjGqoOT*-"—  OCQ—   »^q;>^ 
cTodod—  (D  —  —  —  —  —  po—  <^ 


oooqoSqooo  —  PJOn 

OOOOOOOQO    rtaO    O    <S 

od—  T?—  rr^r^cfsc5'<No'c>cy\ 


O    —  (S  CT\ 

^00  O  (S 

O  00  —  >^ 

CO  ■<*  •* 


ooooooooooooo 

OOOOOOOOOOOOQ 
00    —    ■*—    rT^^r^OC^Mrf^'* 

'^   "     —    N    <S     COcOCO-'i-cO-'t'iJ-'^ 


as 

n 

^  ...  .... 

t; OO-QOoo 

O  GO  —  —     — 

w  00    —  ^  00    ^  0^ 

05,.  £^(30       •       •       •       -00---- 

O    ""      .  3^  "5  00  <»  OO    2*   i-*   -    ^-'■   u 


CHAPTER  XIII 
SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION 

PRIOR  to  the  war  with  Germany  the  Ordnance  Depart- 
ment, in  providing  .30-caliber  ammunition  for  our  army 
rifles  and  machine  guns,  had  thought  in  terms  of  mil- 
lions and  had  placed  its  ammunition  orders  on  that  scale.  But 
when  hostilities  were  at  hand  and  steel  and  walnut  were  being 
assembled  into  rifles  to  arm  the  indefinitely  increasing  millions 
of  Yankee  soldiers  whom  we  would  send  and  keep  on  sending 
to  Europe  until  victory  was  ours,  small-arms  ammunition 
stepped  out  of  the  million  class  and  became  an  industry  whose 
units  of  production  were  reckoned  by  the  billion.  The  war 
increased  the  human  strength  of  the  American  Army  approxi- 
mately thirty  times.  That  ratio  of  increase  was  carried  over 
into  the  production  of  ammunition  for  rifles  and  machine  guns. 
The  story  of  ammunition  in  the  war  is  the  story  of  a  three- 
billion  output  forced  from  a  hundred-million  capacity.  In  this 
effort  we  find  another  of  those  frequent  industrial  romances 
which  the  war  produced  in  America ;  for,  when  called  upon  to 
do  more  than  an  industrial  possibility,  as  we  regarded  such 
things  in  1917,  the  contriving  executive  and  organizing  ability 
and  the  skillful  hands  of  the  ammunition  industry  made  good. 
Our  .30-caliber  ammunition  capacity  in  the  United  States 
before  the  war  was  about  100,000,000  cartridges  a  year.  We 
actually  produced  in  the  war  period  the  huge  total  of  3,507,- 
023,300  small-arms  cartridges.  Pushed  at  feverish  haste,  such 
expansion  naturally  recorded  its  mistakes  and  its  failures ;  but 
none  of  these  was  fatal  or  irremediable.  The  fact  will  always 
remain  that  a  difficult  art  was  enlarged  in  time  to  take  care 
of  every  demand  of  the  American  Army  for  small-arms  ammu- 
nition, and  that  no  military  operation  on  our  part  was  held 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION  245 

up  by  lack  of  this  ammunition.  Hence  is  it  submitted  that  the 
production  of  small-arms  cartridges  was  one  of  the  genuine 
achievements  of  our  Ordnance  Department. 

Let  us  consider  first  the  production  of  the  .30-caliber  service 
ammunition,  which  may  be  regarded  as  the  standard  product 
of  the  ammunition  industry.  This  was  the  ammunition  used 
in  our  two  service  rifles,  the  Springfield  or  United  States  model 
of  1903  and  the  United  States  model  of  1917,  a  modification 
of  the  British  rifle,  Pattern  1914,  and  in  most  of  the  machine 
guns  which  we  fired  in  France  (although  we  used  the  8-milli- 
meter cartridge  with  the  Chauchat  machine  rifle).  When  the 
war  broke  out  we  had  on  hand  approximately  200,000,000 
rounds  of  .30-caliber  cartridges.  Most  of  these  had  been  manu- 
factured by  the  Government  at  the  Frankford  Arsenal,  which 
was,  in  fact,  practically  the  only  plant  in  the  United  States 
equipped  to  produce  this  ammunition  in  appreciable  quantities. 

Some  years  before  the  war,  however,  the  Government  had 
adopted  the  policy  of  encouraging  the  manufacture  of  army 
ammunition  in  private  plants.  This  was  done  by  placing  with 
various  concerns  small  annual  orders  for  this  type  of  ammuni- 
tion. These  orders  were  usually  in  the  neighborhood  of  1,000,- 
000  rounds  each.  The  purpose  of  such  orders,  insignificant  as 
they  were,  was  to  scatter  throughout  the  principal  private 
ammunition  factories  the  necessary  jigs,  fixtures,  gauges,  and 
other  tooling  required  in  the  production  of  cartridges  for  army 
rifles  and  machine  guns.  These  small  orders  might  also  be 
expected  to  educate  the  operating  forces  of  the  private  plants 
in  such  manufacture.  By  this  means  the  Government  hoped 
to  have,  in  an  emergency,  a  nucleus  of  skill  and  equipment 
which  could  be  quickly  expanded  to  meet  war  requirements. 

As  a  further  means  of  stimulating  interest  in  this  peace- 
time undertaking,  the  Ordnance  Department  conducted  each 
year  a  sort  of  competition  among  the  private  manufacturers 
of  small-arms  ammunition.  The  output  of  each  factory  which 
accepted  the  government  orders  was  tested  for  proper  func- 
tioning and  accuracy.  Those  cartridges  which  won  in  this  com- 
petition were  used  as  the  ammunition  shot  in  the  national  rifle 


246  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

matches;  and  the  winning  concern  could  use  its  achievement 
in  its  advertising. 

But  these  educational  efforts  on  the  part  of  the  Government 
failed  to  create  a  capacity  anywhere  nearly  adequate  to  the 
demands  of  such  a  war  as  that  into  which  we  were  plunged  in 
1917.  We  had  built  up  no  large  reserves  of  ammunition,  and 
the  orders  placed  with  private  manufacturers  had  been  so 
small  that  they  had  resulted  in  virtually  no  factory  prepara- 
tion at  all  for  great  quantity  production.  For  all  practical  pur- 
poses the  entire  ammunition-manufacturing  capacity  for  .30- 
caliber  cartridges  in  1917  was  encompassed  within  the  walls  of 
the  Frankford  Arsenal. 

There  was,  however,  in  the  ammunition  industry,  as  in  the 
manufacture  of  rifles,  one  fortunate  condition  existing  when 
we  entered  the  war.  For  some  time  numerous  American  con- 
cerns had  been  working  on  the  manufacture  of  cartridges  for 
both  the  British  and  the  French  governments.  The  cartridges 
being  turned  out  under  these  contracts  were  not  suitable  for 
our  use,  being  of  different  caliber  from  those  taken  by  Ameri- 
can weapons,  and  this  meant  that  the  machinery  in  existence 
could  not  be  converted  to  the  production  of  American  ammuni- 
tion without  radical  and  time-consuming  alteration  of  tools. 
But  cartridges  are  cartridges,  regardless  of  their  size;  and 
the  manufacture  which  was  supplying  France  and  England 
had  resulted  in  educating  thousands  of  mechanics  and  shop 
executives  in  the  production  of  ammunition.  Consequently, 
when  we  went  into  the  war  we  had  the  men  and  the  skill  ready 
at  hand;  we  needed  only  to  produce  the  tools  and  the  machin- 
ery in  addition  to  the  raw  materials. 

Yet  this  was  in  itself  a  problem.  How  should  we  meet  it? 
Three  courses  seemed  to  be  possible  for  the  Government.  In 
the  first  place,  we  could  build,  from  the  ground  up,  an  immense 
government  arsenal  with  an  annual  capacity  of  1,000,000,000 
rounds,  or  ten  times  that  of  the  great  Frankford  Arsenal.  Or 
we  could  interest  manufacturers  in  a  project  of  building  a 
private  cartridge  factory  capable  of  producing  1,000,000,000 
rounds  a  year.  Both  of  these  methods  were  predicated  on  the 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION  247 

assumption  that  the  existing  cartridge  factories  had  their  hands 
full  with  orders.  The  third  plan  was  to  place  our  cartridge 
demands  with  the  existing  ammunition  plants  and  let  them 
increase  their  facilities  to  take  care  of  our  orders. 

As  soon  as  the  early  orders  had  been  given  and  all  available 
capacity  had  been  set  going,  this  problem  engaged  the  study 
and  attention  of  the  Ordnance  Department.  In  the  early  fall  of 
1917  a  meeting  of  the  manufacturers  of  small-arms  ammuni- 
tion was  held  in  Washington  to  discuss  the  matter.  Principally 
on  account  of  the  difficulties  in  providing  a  trained  working 
force  for  a  new  government  arsenal  or  private  plant,  the 
opinion  was  unanimous  that  the  existing  concerns  should 
expand  in  facilities  and  trained  personnel  to  handle  the  car- 
tridge project.  Out  of  this  meeting  grew  the  American  Society 
of  Manufacturers  of  Small  Arms  and  Ammunition.  Thereafter 
until  the  close  of  the  war  this  society  or  its  committees  met 
about  once  every  two  weeks  to  discuss  problems  arising  in  the 
work.  The  officers  of  the  Ordnance  Department  in  charge  of 
the  ammunition  project  attended  all  these  meetings.  The  re- 
sult of  such  cooperation  was  gratifyingly  shown,  not  only  in 
the  standardization  of  manufacturing  processes  in  the  various 
plants,  but  also  in  the  output  of  cartridges. 

The  success  of  this  effort  is  best  shown  in  the  production 
figures  of  the  period  from  April,  1917,  to  November  30,  1918. 
In  that  time  the  United  States  Cartridge  Company  turned  out 
684,334,300  rounds  of  our  caliber-. 30  service  ammunition; 
the  Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Company,  468,967,500 
rounds;  the  Remington  Arms-Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Com- 
pany, 1,218,979,300;  the  Peters  Cartridge  Company,  84,- 
169,800;  the  Western  Cartridge  Company,  48,018,800;  the 
Dominion  Arsenal,  502,000;  the  Frankford  Arsenal,  76,739,- 
300;  and  the  National  Brass  &  Copper  Tube  Company, 
22,700,400. 

This  production  record  was  to  some  extent  facilitated  by  a 
leniency  on  the  part  of  the  Ordnance  Department  which  it 
had  not  displayed  before  the  war.  When  we  could  take  plenty 
of  time  in  ammunition  manufacture  our  specifications  for  car- 


248  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

tridges  were  extremely  rigid.  It  soon  became  evident  that  if  we 
adhered  to  our  earlier  specifications  we  should  limit  the  out- 
put of  cartridges.  It  was  found,  in  a  joint  meeting  of  ord- 
nance officers  and  ammunition  manufacturers,  that  certain 
increased  tolerances  could  be  permitted  in  our  specifications 
without  affecting  the  serviceability  of  the  ammunition.  Con- 
sequently, new  specifications  for  our  war  ammunition  were 
drawn,  which  enabled  the  plants  to  get  into  quantity  produc- 
tion much  more  quickly  than  would  have  been  possible  if  we 
had  not  relaxed  our  prewar  attitude. 

The  ordinary  service  cartridge  consists  of  a  brass  cartridge 
case,  a  primer,  a  propelling  charge  of  smokeless  powder,  and  a 
bullet  made  with  a  jacket  or  envelope  of  cupronickel  enclosing 
a  lead  slug  or  core.  Cupronickel  is  a  hard  alloy  of  copper  and 
nickel.  Steel  would  be  the  ideal  covering  for  a  bullet,  because 
of  its  cheapness  and  availability,  but  steel  has  not  been  used, 
because  it  is  likely  to  rust  and  also  to  cut  the  delicate  rifling 
of  the  gun  barrel.  Cupronickel  is  a  compromise,  being  strong 
enough  to  hold  the  interior  lead  from  deforming,  but  not  so 
hard  as  to  wear  down  excessively  the  rifling  in  the  gun  barrel. 
Even  when  we  entered  the  war,  the  long  continued  fighting  in 
Europe  had  created  a  shortage  in  cupronickel,  and  by  the  time 
of  the  armistice  it  was  clear  that  this  shortage  would  soon  be- 
come so  acute  as  to  compel  our  finding  a  substitute  for  cupro- 
nickel. This  shortage  had  already  occurred  in  Germany,  where 
the  enemy  ordnance  engineers  had  produced  a  bullet  encased 
in  steel  which  in  turn  was  clothed  with  a  slight  covering  of 
copper.  The  soft  copper  coating  kept  the  steel  from  injuring 
the  gun  barrel.  We  ourselves  were  experimenting  with  copper- 
coated  steel  bullets  when  peace  came,  and  should  have  been 
prepared  to  furnish  a  substitute  had  cupronickel  failed  us. 

Some  of  the  earliest  ammunition  sent  to  our  forces  in  France 
developed  a  tendency  to  hang  fire  and  to  misfire;  and  a  liberal 
quantity  of  it,  amounting  to  six  months'  production  of  the 
Frankford  Arsenal,  was  condemned  and  withdrawn  from  use. 
This  matter  was  fully  aired  in  the  newspapers  at  the  time.  It 
transpired  that  the  faulty  ammunition  had  been  produced 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION  249 

entirely  in  the  Frankford  Arsenal  and  that  the  cause  of  the 
trouble  was  the  primer  in  the  cartridge.  The  primer  performs 
the  same  function  that  the  flint  did  on  the  old-fashioned  squir- 
rel guns:  it  touches  off  the  explosive  propellant  charge.  But 
the  flint  sent  only  a  spark  into  the  powder,  whereas  the  modern 
primer  produces  a  long,  hot  flame.  The  primers  in  the  ammuni- 
tion manufactured  at  the  Frankford  Arsenal  had  given  ordi- 
narily satisfactory  results  in  twelve  years  of  peace-time  use. 
The  flame  charge  in  this  primer  contained  sulphur,  potassium 
chlorate,  and  antimony  sulphide.  Produced  under  normal  con- 
ditions, with  plenty  of  time  for  drying,  this  primer  was  satis- 
factory. But  sulphur,  when  oxidized,  changes  to  an  acid  ex- 
tremely corrosive  to  metal  parts,  and  oxidized  primers  are 
liable  to  imperfect  functioning.  Heat  and  moisture  accelerate 
the  change  of  sulphur  to  acid;  and  if  there  happens  to  be 
bromate  in  the  potassium  chlorate  of  the  priming  charge,  the 
change  is  even  more  rapid.  An  investigation  of  the  Frankford 
Arsenal  showed  that  these  very  elements  were  present.  Because 
of  the  haste  of  production  of  cartridges,  too  much  moisture  had 
been  allowed  to  get  into  the  arsenal  dry  houses.  The  potassium 
chlorate  was  also  found  to  contain  appreciable  quantities  of 
bromate.  The  condition  was  remedied  by  adopting  another 
primer  composition.  And  then,  to  play  doubly  safe,  the  govern- 
ment specifications  were  amended  to  prevent  the  use  of  potas- 
sium chlorate  containing  more  than  .01  per  cent  of  bromate. 
This  condemned  ammunition  was  but  a  trifling  fraction  of  the 
total  output,  or  even  of  the  production  then  going  on.  The 
primers  used  by  the  various  private  manufacturers  of  ammuni- 
tion functioned  satisfactorily.  Although  we  were  not  rigid  in 
our  specifications  for  the  bulk  of  the  service  ammunition,  in  one 
point  we  were  most  meticulous :  in  respect  to  the  ammunition 
used  by  the  machine  guns  mounted  on  our  airplanes.  For  these 
weapons  we  created  an  Ai  class  of  service  .30-caliber  car- 
tridges; for  it  was  highly  important  that  there  be  no  mal- 
functioning of  ammunition  in  the  air.  Every  cartridge  of  this 
class  had  to  be  specially  gauged  throughout  its  manufacture. 
This  care  resulted  in  a  slower  production  of  airplane  cartridges 


250  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

than  of  those  for  use  on  the  ground,  but  we  always  had  enough 
for  our  needs. 

Until  we  went  to  war  with  Germany  our  Army  had  known 
only  the  cartridge  which  fired  the  hard-jacketed  lead  bullet. 
But  we  entered  a  conflict  in  which  several  novel  sorts  of  small- 
arms  projectiles  were  in  familiar  use;  and  it  became  necessary 
for  us  to  take  up  the  manufacture  of  these  strange  missiles  at 
once.  They  included  such  special  types  as  tracer  bullets  to 
indicate  the  path  of  fire  in  the  air,  incendiary  bullets  for  setting 
on  fire  observation  balloons,  hostile  planes,  and  dirigible  air- 
ships, and,  finally,  armor-piercing  bullets  for  use  against  the 
armor  plate  with  which  airplanes  and  tanks  were  equipped.  We 
had  developed  none  of  these  in  this  country  before  the  war, 
except  that  in  the  Frankford  Arsenal  our  designers  had  done 
some  little  experimental  work  with  armor-piercing  ammuni- 
tion, carrying  it,  in  fact,  to  the  point  of  an  efficient  design. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  Ordnance  Department  was  to 
send  an  officer  to  visit  the  ammunition  factories  of  France  and 
England  to  study  the  methods  of  manufacturing  these  special 
types  of  bullets.  These  friendly  nations  willingly  gave  us  full 
information  at  first  hand  with  respect  to  this  complicated 
manufacture,  which  we  were  thus  enabled  to  begin  in  Septem- 
ber, 1917.  Special  machinery  was  required  for  loading  the 
tracer  bullet  and  also  for  producing  the  incendiary  projectile. 
We  adopted  British  practice  for  both  of  these.  We  ourselves 
were  well  equipped  to  begin  the  production  of  the  armor- 
piercing  bullet,  for  which  we  had  previously  solved  the  prob- 
lems of  design;  yet  the  production  of  metals  to  be  used  in  this 
missile  required  some  further  experimental  work.  By  Febru- 
ary, 1918,  however,  our  production  of  armor-piercing  bullets 
was  well  under  way,  and  by  the  time  the  war  came  to  an  end 
we  had  produced  nearly  5,000,000  of  them. 

The  tracer  bullet  which  we  manufactured  contained  a  mix- 
ture of  barium  peroxide  and  magnesium  and  in  flight  burned 
with  the  intensity  of  a  calcium  light.  These  bullets  were  prin- 
cipally used  by  machine  gunners  of  aircraft,  since  in  the  air 
it  is  impossible  to  tell  where  machine  gun  projectiles  are  going 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION  251 

unless  there  is  some  device  which  enables  the  gunner  to  see  their 
trajectory.  The  device  used  was  to  insert  tracer  bullets  at  inter- 
vals in  the  belts  of  cartridges  fed  into  the  machine  gun.  The 
common  conception  of  a  tracer  bullet  is  one  that  leaves  a 
trail  of  smoke  in  its  flight;  whereas  our  tracer  and  the  British 
tracer  were  practically  smokeless,  the  gunner  observing  the 
direction  of  aim  by  following  with  his  eye  the  bright  lights 
of  the  tracer  bullets.  These  lights  were  plainly  visible  in  the 
brightest  sunlight.  Although  the  slight  quantity  of  the  flaming 
mixture  burned  but  a  few  seconds,  it  was  sufficient  to  trace  the 
flight  for  500  yards  or  more  from  the  muzzle  of  the  machine 
gun.  The  tracer  bullet  consisted  of  a  cupronickel  shell,  the  nose 
of  which  contained  a  leaden  core  to  balance  the  bullet  prop- 
erly. The  rear  chamber  of  the  bullet  held  a  cup  containing  the 
mixture  of  barium  peroxide  and  magnesium.  The  rear  end  of 
the  bullet  was  left  slightly  open,  and  through  this  opening  the 
mixture  was  ignited  by  the  hot  flame  of  the  propelling  powder 
discharge. 

An  entirely  different  principle  was  used  in  the  construction 
of  the  incendiary  bullet.  This  bullet  was  also  encased  in  cupro- 
nickel; but  the  incendiary  chemical,  which  was  phosphorus, 
was  contained  in  a  chamber  in  the  nose  of  the  bullet.  A  serrated 
plug  held  the  phosphorus  in  its  chamber,  and  behind  this  plug 
was  a  solid  plug  of  lead  coming  flush  with  the  base  of  the 
bullet  and  soldered  thereto.  On  one  side  of  the  missile  was 
a  hole  drilled  through  the  cupronickel  into  one  of  the  grooves 
of  the  serrated  plug.  This  hole  was  stopped  by  a  special  kind 
of  solder.  The  heat  of  friction  developed  in  the  infinitesimal 
space  of  time  while  the  projectile  was  passing  through  the  gun 
barrel  served  the  double  purpose  of  melting  out  the  solder  from 
the  hole  and  igniting  the  phosphorus  within  the  chamber. 
Thereafter  the  centrifugal  force  of  the  revolving  bullet  whirled 
the  burning  phosphorus  out  through  the  unplugged  hole.  In 
the  air  the  fire  of  the  phosphorus  could  not  be  discerned,  but 
the  burning  chemical  threw  off  considerable  smoke,  so  that  the 
eye  of  the  gunner  could  follow  the  blue  spiral  to  its  mark.  Our 


252  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

incendiary  bullet  had  an  effective  range  of  350  yards,  after 
which  distance  the  phosphorus  was  burned  out. 

Equally  interesting  was  the  construction  of  the  armor- 
piercing  bullet.  Heavy  and  solid  as  the  jacketed  lead  bullet 
used  in  our  service  guns  seems  to  be,  when  fired  against  even 
light  armor  plate  it  leaves  only  a  small  mark  upon  its  objective. 
As  soon  as  the  cupronickel  jacket  strikes  the  armor  plate  it 
splits  and  the  lead  core  flattens  out  and  flies  into  fragments. 
The  armor  plate  may  not  even  be  dented  by  this  impact.  But 
change  the  core  of  this  missile  from  lead  to  hardened  steel, 
and  an  entirely  different  result  is  produced.  Our  armor-pierc- 
ing bullet  was  made  with  a  cupronickel  jacket  for  the  sake 
of  the  gun  barrel.  The  inner  side  of  this  jacket  was  lined  with 
a  thin  coat  of  lead,  which  was  made  thicker  in  the  nose  of  the 
bullet.  A  core  of  specially  heat-treated  steel  completed  the 
construction  of  the  projectile.  When  this  missile  was  fired 
against  armor  plate  the  jacket  split  and  the  lead  lining  vir- 
tually disappeared  from  the  impact,  but  the  pointed  steel  core 
kept  on  and  bored  a  hole  through  the  plate  as  it  might  through 
soft  wood. 

The  production  figures  show  the  degree  of  success  which 
we  attained  in  the  manufacture  of  these  special  types  of  ammu- 
nition. Up  to  November  30,  1918,  the  E.  I.  DuPont  de  Ne- 
mours Company  had  produced  6,057,000  tracer  cartridges  of 
.30  caliber  and  1,560,000  incendiary  cartridges  of  the  same 
size.  The  Frankford  Arsenal  turned  out  22,245,000  tracer 
cartridges  of  this  size,  14,148  incendiary  cartridges,  and 
4,746,900  armor-piercing  cartridges.  We  placed  an  addi- 
tional order  for  armor-piercing  projectiles  with  the  Dominion 
Arsenal,  which  delivered  to  us  1,980,000  such  cartridges. 

We  also  set  out  to  develop  new  manufacturing  facilities  for 
the  production  of  this  special  aircraft  ammunition.  Excellent 
tracer  bullets  were  produced  by  the  National  Fireworks  Com- 
pany, of  West  Hanover,  Massachusetts,  and  that  company 
was  getting  into  a  satisfactory  production  stride  when  the 
armistice  was  signed.  The  Hero  Manufacturing  Company,  of 
Philadelphia,  was  also  turning  out  an  approved  incendiary 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION  253 

bullet  when  peace  came.  These  various  special  bullets  were 
loaded  in  cartridges  at  the  Frankford  Arsenal. 

When  the  fighting  ceased  we  were  working  on  the  develop- 
ment of  armor-piercing  bullets  that  would  also  be  incendiary 
and  of  armor-piercing  bullets  that  would  also  contain  a  tracing 
mixture.  It  was  thought  that  bullets  of  these  types  would  be 
particularly  valuable  for  aircraft  use.  Although  we  had  done 
considerable  experimenting  toward  both  these  ends,  no  satis- 
factory types  had  yet  been  developed. 

There  was  another  class  of  small  arms  for  which  we  also 
had  to  produce  ammunition  on  a  war  scale.  Our  automatic 
pistols  and  revolvers  demanded  .45-caliber  ball  cartridges.  In 
normal  times  the  Frankford  Arsenal  had  been  almost  our  sole 
producer  of  these  cartridges,  and  it  had  attained  an  annual 
output  of  approximately  10,000,000  rounds  of  them.  This 
quantity  was  nowhere  nearly  adequate  for  our  war  needs, 
especially  after  the  decision  to  equip  our  troops  much  more 
numerously  with  pistols  and  revolvers  than  we  had  formerly 
done.  Consequently  it  was  necessary  for  us  to  develop  addi- 
tional manufacturing  facilities  for  .45-caliber  ammunition. 
We  did  this  by  placing  orders  with  some  of  the  same  manu- 
facturers who  were  developing  the  .30-caliber  production. 
Because  it  was  necessary  for  us  to  give  preference  always  to 
rifle  and  machine  gun  ammunition,  the  manufacture  of  pistol 
cartridges  was  not  carried  through  so  rapidly  as  some  other 
phases  of  the  ammunition  program;  but  a  satisfactory  output 
was  reached  in  time  to  meet  the  immediate  demands  of  our 
forces  in  the  field,  and  this  production  was  expanding  and 
keeping  ahead  of  the  increased  needs  of  this  sort  of  cartridge. 
The  total  war  production  of  .45-caliber  ammunition  by  the 
various  factories  was  as  follows: 


United  States  Cartridge  Company 75,500,000 

Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Company        ....  46,446,800 

Remington  Arms-Union  Metallic  Cartridge  Company         .  144,825,700 

Peters  Cartridge  Company 55,521,000 

Frankford  Arsenal 12,349,200 


254  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Early  in  1918  our  air  service  field  forces  saw  the  need  of  a 
machine  gun  of  larger  caliber  than  the  quick-iiring  weapons  in 
general  use.  The  flying  services  of  the  principal  Allies  had  de- 
veloped an  1 1 -millimeter  machine  gun  for  use  in  attacking 
the  captive  balloons  of  the  enemy.  This  gun  fired  a  projectile 
only  slightly  less  than  one-half  inch  in  diameter.  To  meet  this 
new  demand  our  Ordnance  Department  found  at  the  Colt's 
factory  about  1,000  Vickers  machine  guns  which  were  being 
built  on  order  for  the  former  Russian  Government.  The  De- 
partment took  over  these  guns  and  modified  them  to  take 
1 1 -millimeter  ammunition;  and  that  step  made  it  necessary 
for  us  to  produce  machine  gun  cartridges  for  these  new 
weapons.  We  at  once  developed  a  modified  French  ll-milli- 
meter  tracer  incendiary  cartridge,  which  in  later  use  proved 
highly  satisfactory.  In  an  experimental  order  the  Frankford 
Arsenal  turned  out  about  100,000  of  these  cartridges,  and  at 
the  time  the  armistice  was  signed  the  Western  Cartridge  Com- 
pany was  prepared  to  produce  this  class  of  ammunition  on  a 
large  scale. 

Even  before  April,  1917,  certain  American  concerns  had 
been  producing  8-millimeter  ammunition  for  the  French  Gov- 
ernment for  use  in  its  machine  guns.  When  we  entered  the  war 
our  Ordnance  Department  found  it  necessary  to  continue  the 
manufacture  of  these  cartridges  for  the  machine  guns  obtained 
by  the  A.  E.  F.  from  the  French.  Up  to  November  30,  1918,  a 
total  of  269,631,800  rounds  had  been  produced  under  our 
supervision.  These  cartridges  were  manufactured  by  the  West- 
em  Cartridge  Company  and  by  the  Remington  Arms  Company 
at  its  Swanton  plant. 

How  well  and  amply  we  were  producing  ammunition  for 
our  machine  guns  and  rifles  is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  our 
average  monthly  production,  based  on  our  showing  in  July, 
August,  and  September,  1918,  was  277,894,000  rounds,  as 
against  a  monthly  average  for  Great  Britain  of  259,769,000 
rounds  and  for  France  of  139,845,000.  Our  total  production 
of  machine  gun  and  rifle  ammunition  during  the  nineteen 
months  of  warfare  was  2,879,148,000  rounds.  In  the  same 


SMALL-ARMS  AMMUNITION 


255 


period  England  produced  3,486,127,000  rounds  and  France 
2,983,675,000;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  they  had  been 
keyed  up  to  that  voluminous  production  by  three  years  of 
fighting  and  that  our  monthly  production  rate  indicated  that 
we  should  soon  far  surpass  them. 

The  following  table  shows  how  our  production  of  ammuni- 
tion for  all  small  arms,  including  machine  guns,  rifles,  pistols, 
and  revolvers,  grew  month  by  month  during  the  war: 


Rounds 

Rounds 

November  30,  1917 

156,102,792 

July  31,  1918  .      . 

2,306,999,284 

December  31,   1917 

351,117,928 

August  31,  1918    . 

2,623,847,546 

January  31,  1918 

573,981,712 

September  30,  1918 

2,942,875,786 

February  28,   1918 

760,485,688 

October  31,  1918  . 

3,236,396,100 

March  31,  1918     . 

1,021,610,956 

November  30,  1918 

3,507,023,300 

April  30,  1918 

1,318,298492 

December  31,  1918 

3,741,652,200 

May  31,  1918  .      . 

1,616,142,052 

January  31,  1919  . 

3,940,682,744 

June  30,  1918  .      . 

1,958,686,784 

CHAPTER  XIV 
TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL 

I  IKE  many  of  the  other  war  implements  produced  by  the 
Ordnance  Department  for  use  in  France,  the  weapons 
_^  employed  in  fighting  from  the  trenches  were  entirely 
novel  to  American  industry ;  and  in  the  production  of  them  we 
find  the  same  story  of  difficulties  in  the  adoption  of  foreign  de- 
signs, of  the  development  of  our  own  designs,  of  delays  en- 
countered and  mistakes  made  in  equipping  a  new  industry  from 
the  ground  up,  and,  finally,  of  the  triumphant  arrival  at  quan- 
tity production  in  a  marvelously  brief  time,  considering  the 
obstacles  which  had  to  be  overcome. 

When  the  movements  of  armies  in  the  World  War  ceased 
and  they  were  held  in  deadlock  in  the  trenches,  the  fighters  at 
once  began  devising  weapons  with  which  they  could  kill  each 
other  from  below  ground.  For  this  purpose  they  borrowed  from 
human  experience  running  back  to  time  immemorial.  They 
took  a  leaf  from  the  book  of  the  Roman  fire-ball  throwers  and 
developed  the  hand  grenade  beyond  the  point  to  which  it  had 
been  brought  in  the  European  warfare  of  the  last  century. 
They  called  upon  an  industry  which  had  once  existed  solely  for 
the  amusement  of  the  people,  the  fireworks  industry,  to  con- 
tribute its  golden  rain  and  rainbow-hued  stars  as  signals  with 
which  to  talk  by  night.  Other  geniuses  of  the  trenches  took 
empty  cannon  cartridges  and,  setting  them  up  as  ground 
mortars,  succeeded  in  throwing  bombs  from  them  across  No 
Man's  Land  into  the  enemy  ranks.  They  even  for  a  time  resur- 
rected the  catapult  of  Trojan  days,  although  this  device 
attained  no  great  success.  But  from  all  such  activities  new 
weapons  of  warfare  sprang,  crude  at  first,  but  later  refined 
as  only  modern  science  and  manufacture  could  make  them. 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 

HAND  GRENADES 

Left  to  Right:  (i)  Defensive,  (2)  Offensive,  (3)  Gas,  (4)  Phosphorus 


Photo  from  Stenotype  Company 

WATERPROOFING  RIFLE  GRENADES 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  257 

America  entered  the  war  when  this  development  of  ordnance 
novelties  had  reached  an  advanced  state.  It  became  necessary 
for  us,  then,  to  make  a  rapid  study  of  what  had  been  done  and 
then  go  ahead  with  our  own  production,  either  from  foreign 
designs  or  with  inventions  of  our  own. 

To  this  end,  in  April,  1917,  a  few  days  after  we  declared 
war  against  Germany,  the  Trench  Warfare  Section  was  organ- 
ized within  the  Ordnance  Department  and  given  charge  of 
the  production  of  these  novelties.  The  section  did  not  entirely 
confine  itself  to  trench-warfare  materials :  one  of  its  chief  pro- 
duction activities  was  concerned  with  the  manufacture  of  the 
various  sorts  of  bombs  to  be  dropped  from  airplanes.  Also,  at 
the  beginning  of  its  existence  it  had  charge  of  the  production 
of  implements  for  fighting  with  poison  gas  and  flame.  Although 
in  large  part  this  phase  of  its  work  was  taken  away  from  it  in 
the  summer  of  1917  and  later  placed  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  newly  organized  Chemical  Warfare  Service,  the  Trench 
W^arfare  Section  continued  to  conduct  certain  branches  of  gas- 
warfare  manufacture,  in  particular  the  production  of  the 
famous  Livens  projectors  of  gas  and  also  the  manufacture  of 
the  portable  toxic-gas  sets  for  producing  gas  clouds  from 
cylinders.  Altogether,  the  Trench  Warfare  Section  was  charged 
with  the  responsibility  of  producing  some  forty-seven  devices, 
every  one  of  them  new  to  American  manufacture  and  some 
extremely  difficult  to  make.  The  backbone  of  the  program 
consisted  of  the  production  of  grenades,  of  both  the  hand- 
thrown  and  the  rifle-fired  varieties,  trench  mortars,  trench- 
mortar  ammunition,  pyrotechnics  of  various  sorts,  and  bombs 
for  the  airplanes,  with  their  sighting  and  release  mechanisms. 

In  the  production  of  these  new  devices  there  arose,  under 
the  tutelage  of  the  Trench  Warfare  Section,  a  new  form  of 
cooperation  between  Government  and  private  manufacturers. 
The  manufacturers  engaged  in  the  production  of  various  classes 
of  these  munitions  novelties  joined  in  formal  associations. 
There  was  a  Hand  Grenade  Manufacturers'  Association,  under 
the  capable  leadership  of  William  Sparks,  president  of  the 
Sparks- Withington  Company,  of  Jackson,  Michigan ;  the  Drop 


258  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Bomb  Manufacturers'  Association,  headed  by  J.  L.  Sinyard, 
president  of  A.  O.  Smith  Corporation,  Milwaukee;  the  Six- 
inch  Trench-mortar  Shell  Manufacturers'  Association,  R,  W. 
Millard,  president  of  Foster-Merriam  Company,  Meriden, 
Connecticut;  the  Rifle  Grenade  Manufacturers'  Association, 
under  the  leadership  of  F.  S.  Briggs,  president  of  the  Briggs  & 
Stratton  Company,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin;  and  the  Livens 
Projector  Manufacturers'  Association.  A  similar  association  of 
manufacturers  engaged  in  army  contracts  existed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  small-arms  ammunition;  but  in  no  other  branch  of 
the  Ordnance  Department  was  the  development  of  such  co- 
operation carried  on  to  the  extent  of  that  fathered  by  the 
Trench  Warfare  Section. 

The  existence  of  these  associations  was  of  inestimable  bene- 
fit in  securing  the  rapid  development,  standardization  for 
quantity  manufacture,  and  production  of  these  strange  de- 
vices. Each  association  had  its  president,  its  other  officers,  and 
its  regular  meetings.  These  meetings  were  attended  by  the 
interested  officers  of  the  Trench  Warfare  Section.  In  the  meet- 
ings the  experiments  of  the  manufacturers  and  the  short-cut 
methods  developed  in  their  shops  were  freely  discussed;  and, 
if  modifications  of  design  were  suggested,  such  questions  were 
debated  out  in  these  meetings  of  practical  technicians,  and 
all  the  contractors  simultaneously  received  the  benefits. 

The  Trench  Warfare  Section  produced  its  results  under 
the  handicap  of  being  low  in  the  priority  ratings,  many  other 
items  of  ordnance  being  considered  in  Washington  of  more 
importance  than  the  trench-fighting  materials  and  therefore 
entitled  to  first  call  upon  raw  materials  and  transportation. 
In  the  priority  lists  the  leader  of  forty-seven  trench-warfare 
articles,  the  240-millimeter  mortars,  stood  twenty-second,  and 
the  others  trailed  after. 

GRENADES 

The  first  of  the  trench-warfare  weapons  with  which  the 
rookie  soldier  became  acquainted  was  the  hand  grenade;  for 
this,  at  least  in  its  practice  or  dummy  form,  was  supplied  to  the 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  259 

training  camps  in  this  country.  To  all  intents  and  purposes  the 
hand  grenade  was  a  product  of  the  war  against  Germany,  al- 
though grenades  had  been  more  or  less  used  since  explosives 
existed.  All  earlier  grenades  had  been  crude  devices  with  only 
limited  employment  in  warfare;  but  in  the  three  years  pre- 
ceding America's  participation  in  the  war  the  grenade  had 
become  a  carefully  built  weapon. 

The  extent  of  our  production  of  hand  grenades  may  be  seen 
in  the  fact  that,  when  the  effort  was  at  its  height,  10,000 
workers  were  engaged  exclusively  in  manufacture  of  them.  The 
firing  mechanism  of  the  explosive  grenades  which  we  built 
was  known  as  the  Bouchon  assembly.  In  the  production  of  this 
item,  nineteen  of  every  twenty  workers  were  women.  In  fact, 
no  other  item  in  the  entire  ordnance  field  was  produced  so 
exclusively  by  women.  Incidentally,  at  no  time  during  the  war 
was  there  a  strike  in  any  grenade  factory. 

For  a  long  time  only  one  type  of  hand  grenade  was  used  in 
the  trenches  of  France.  This  was  the  so-called  defensive  gre- 
nade, built  of  stout  metal  which  would  fly  into  fragments 
when  the  interior  charge  exploded.  As  might  be  expected, 
such  a  weapon  was  used  only  by  men  actually  within  the 
trenches,  the  walls  of  which  protected  the  throwers  from  the 
flying  fragments.  But  as  the  war  continued,  six  other  distinct 
kinds  of  grenades  were  developed,  America  herself  contribut- 
ing one  of  the  most  important  of  them;  and  during  our  war 
activities  we  were  engaged  in  manufacturing  all  seven. 

The  defensive  or  fragmentation-type  grenade  was  the  com- 
monest, most  numerous,  and  perhaps  the  most  useful.  Another 
important  one,  however,  was  that  known  as  the  offensive 
grenade,  and  it  was  America's  own  contribution  to  trench  war- 
fare. The  body  of  the  offensive  grenade  was  made  of  paper, 
and  its  deadly  effect  was  produced  by  the  flame  and  concussion 
of  the  explosion  itself.  It  was  quite  sure  to  kill  any  man  within 
three  yards  of  it  when  it  went  off ;  yet  it  was  safe  to  use  in  the 
open  offensive  movements,  for  there  were  no  pieces  of  metal 
to  fly  back  and  hit  the  thrower. 

A  third  development  was  known  as  the  gas  grenade.  It  was 


26o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

built  of  sheet  metal,  and  its  toxic  contents  were  effective  in 
making  enemy  trenches  and  dugouts  uninhabitable.  A  fourth, 
a  grenade  of  similar  construction,  was  filled  with  phosphorus 
instead  of  gas,  and  was  known  as  the  phosphorus  grenade.  This 
grenade  scattered  burning  phosphorus  over  an  area  three  to  five 
yards  in  diameter  and  released  a  dense  cloud  of  white  smoke. 
In  open  attacks  upon  machine  gun  nests,  phosphorus  grenades 
were  thrown  in  barrages  to  build  smoke  screens  for  the  attack- 
ing forces. 

A  fifth  class  was  a  combination  hand  and  rifle  grenade,  a 
British  device  adopted  in  our  program.  The  sixth  class  of 
grenades  was  known  as  the  incendiary  type.  These  were  paper 
bombs  filled  with  burning  material  and  designed  for  use 
against  structures  intended  to  be  destroyed  by  fire.  Finally, 
in  the  seventh  class,  were  the  thermit  grenades,  built  of  terne- 
plate  and  filled  with  a  compound  containing  thermit,  which 
develops  an  intense  heat  while  melting.  Thermit  grenades  were 
used  principally  to  destroy  captured  guns.  One  of  them  touched 
off  in  the  breech  of  a  cannon  would  fuse  the  breechblock 
mechanism  and  destroy  the  usefulness  of  the  weapon. 

All  these  except  the  incendiary  grenade  used  the  same  firing 
mechanism,  and  the  incendiary  grenade  firing  mechanism  was 
the  standard  one  modified  in  a  single  particular. 

The  earliest  American  requirement  in  this  production  was 
for  defensive  grenades  of  the  fragmentation  type.  Our  first 
estimate  was  that  we  should  need  21,000,000  of  these  for 
actual  warfare  and  2,000,000  of  the  unloaded  type  for  prac- 
tice and  training  work.  But,  as  the  war  continued  and  the 
American  plans  developed  in  scale,  we  saw  that  we  should 
require  a  much  greater  quantity;  and  orders  were  finally  placed 
for  a  total  of  68,000,000  live  grenades  and  over  3,000,000  of 
the  practice  variety. 

By  August  20,  1917,  the  Trench  Warfare  Section  had  de- 
veloped the  design  and  the  drawings  for  the  defensive  grenade. 
The  first  contract — for  5,000  grenades — was  let  to  the  Caskey- 
Dupree  Company  of  Marietta,  Ohio.  This  concern  was  fairly 
entitled  to  such  preference,  because  the  experimentation  lead- 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  261 

ing  up  to  the  design  for  this  bomb  had  been  conducted  almost 
entirely  at  its  plant  in  Marietta. 

Next  came  an  interesting  industrial  development  by  a  well- 
known  American  concern  which  had  previously  devoted  its 
exclusive  energy  to  the  production  of  high-grade  silverware, 
but  which  now,  as  a  patriotic  duty,  undertook  to  build  the 
deadly  defensive  grenades.  This  was  the  Gorham  Manufac- 
turing Company  of  Providence,  Rhode  Island.  This  firm  con- 
tracted to  furnish  complete,  loaded  grenades,  ready  for  ship- 
ment overseas,  and  was  the  only  one  to  build  and  operate  a 
manufacturing  and  loading  plant.  Elsewhere,  contracts  were 
let  for  parts  only,  these  parts  to  converge  at  the  assembling 
plants  later;  and  such  orders  were  rapidly  placed  until,  by  the 
middle  of  December,  1917,  various  industrial  concerns  were 
tooling  up  for  a  total  production  of  21,000,000  of  these  mis- 
siles. The  remodeling  of  factories,  the  building  of  machines, 
and  the  manufacture  of  tools  for  this  undertaking,  pushed 
forward  with  determined  speed,  were  completed  in  from  90 
to  1 20  days,  and  by  April  almost  all  the  companies  had  reached 
the  stage  of  quantity  production. 

The  grenade  which  these  contractors  undertook  to  produce 
was  an  American  product  in  its  design,  although  modeled  after 
grenades  already  in  use  at  the  front.  Its  chief  difference  was 
in  the  firing  mechanism,  in  which  certain  improvements,  or 
what  were  then  thought  to  be  improvements,  had  been  installed 
to  make  it  safer  in  the  hands  of  the  soldier  than  the  grenades 
then  in  use  at  the  front.  This  firing  mechanism,  with  its  pivoted 
lever,  was,  in  fact,  a  radical  departure  from  European  practice. 
The  body  of  this  grenade  was  of  malleable  iron,  and  the  gre- 
nade exploded  with  a  force  greater  than  that  of  any  in  use  in 
France. 

And  then,  on  May  9,  1918,  came  a  cablegram  from  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces  that  brought  the  entire  effort 
to  an  abrupt  halt.  The  officers  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Forces  in  no  uncertain  terms  condemned  the  American  defen- 
sive grenade.  The  trouble  was  that,  in  our  anxiety  to  protect 
the  American  soldier,  we  had  designed  a  grenade  that  was  too 


262  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

safe.  The  firing  mechanism  was  too  complicated.  In  the  opera- 
tion required  to  touch  off  the  fuse,  five  movements  were  neces- 
sary on  the  part  of  the  soldier,  and  in  planning  these  the  psy- 
chology of  a  man  in  battle  had  not  been  taken  sufficiently  into 
consideration.  The  well-known  story  of  the  negro  soldier  who, 
in  practice,  threw  his  grenade  too  soon  because  he  could  feel 
it  "swelling"  in  his  hand,  applies  to  most  soldiers  in  battle.  In 
using  the  new  grenade  the  American  soldier  would  not  go 
through  the  operations  required  to  fire  its  fuse.  Instances  came 
to  light,  too,  showing  that  in  the  excitement  of  battle  the 
American  soldier  forgot  to  release  the  safety  device,  thus  giving 
the  German  an  opportunity  to  hurl  back  the  unexploded 
grenade. 

As  the  result  of  this  discovery,  all  production  was  stopped 
in  the  United  States  and  the  ordnance  engineers  began  rede- 
signing the  weapon.  The  incident  meant  that  15,000,000  rough 
castings  of  grenade  bodies,  3,500,000  assembled  but  empty 
grenades,  and  1,000,000  loaded  grenades  had  to  be  salvaged, 
and  that  on  July  1,  1918,  the  production  of  live  fragmentation 
grenades  in  this  country  was  represented  by  the  figure  zero. 
Some  of  the  machinery  used  in  the  production  of  the  faulty 
grenades  was  useless  and  had  to  be  replaced  by  new;  and  the 
trained  forces  which  had  reached  quantity  production  in  April 
had  to  be  disbanded  or  transferred  to  other  work  while  the 
design  was  being  changed. 

By  August  1  the  new  design  had  been  developed  on  paper, 
and  much  of  the  new  machinery  had  been  produced  and 
installed  in  the  plants,  which  were  ready  to  go  ahead  imme- 
diately with  the  production.  It  is  a  tribute  to  the  patriotism 
of  the  manufacturers  who  lost  time  and  money  by  this  change 
that  little  complaint  was  heard  from  them  by  the  Government. 

In  the  production  of  hand  grenades  the  most  difficult  ele- 
ment of  manufacture,  the  one  item  that  might  have  held  up 
the  delivery  of  completed  mechanisms,  was  the  Bouchon 
assembly.  There  was  an  abundant  foundry  capacity  in  the 
United  States  for  the  production  of  gray-iron  castings  for 
grenade  bodies,  and  this  part  of  the  program  gave  no  anxiety. 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL  263 

The  Bouchon  assembly  threatened  to  be  the  choke  point.  In 
order  to  assure  the  success  of  defensive  grenade  production, 
the  Precision  Castings  Company  of  Syracuse,  New  York,  and 
the  Doehler  Die  Castings  Company  of  Toledo,  Ohio,  and 
Brooklyn,  New  York,  worked  their  plants  twenty-four  hours 
a  day  until  they  had  built  up  a  reserve  of  Bouchons  and  screw 
plugs  and  removed  all  anxiety  on  that  score.  The  total  produc- 
tion of  Bouchons  eventually  reached  the  figure  64,600,000. 

The  first  thought  of  the  Ordnance  Department  was  to  pro- 
duce grenades  by  the  assembling  and  quantitative  method; 
that  is,  by  the  production  of  parts  in  various  plants  and  the 
assembling  of  those  parts  in  other  plants.  But,  because  of 
delay  in  railway  shipments  and  difficulties  due  to  priorities, 
it  was  discovered  that  this  method  of  manufacture,  however 
adaptable  it  might  be  to  other  items  in  the  ordnance  program, 
was  not  a  good  thing  in  grenade  production ;  and  when  the  war 
ended  the  tendency  was  all  in  the  direction  of  having  the 
assembly  contractors  produce  their  own  parts,  either  by  pur- 
chase from  subcontractors  or  by  manufacture  in  their  own 
plants. 

The  orders  for  the  redesigned  grenades  called  for  the  con- 
struction of  44,000,000  of  them.  So  rapidly,  this  time,  were 
the  manufacturers  able  to  reach  quantity  production  that  a 
daily  rate  of  250,000  to  300,000  was  attained  by  November 
11,  1918,  and  by  December  6,  less  than  a  month  after  the 
fighting  stopped,  the  factories  had  turned  out  21,054,339 
defensive  grenades.  It  should  be  remembered  that  the  great 
effort  in  ordnance  production  in  this  country  was  directed 
toward  the  American  offensive  expected  to  occur  on  a  tremen- 
dous scale  in  the  spring  of  1919.  Had  the  war  continued,  the 
fragmentation  grenade  program,  in  spite  of  the  delays  en- 
countered in  its  development,  would  have  produced  a  sufficient 
quantity  of  the  weapons. 

Special  consideration  is  due  the  following-named  firms  for 
their  efforts  in  developing  the  production  of  defensive  gre- 
nades : 

Caskey-Dupree  Company,  Marietta,  Ohio. 


264  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Spacke  Machine  &  Tool  Company,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 
Stewart- Warner  Speedometer  Corporation,  Chicago,  Illinois. 
Miami  Cycle  &  Manufacturing  Company,  Middletown,  Ohio. 
American  Radiator  Company,  Buffalo,  New  York. 
International  Harvester  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois. 
Doehler  Die  Castings  Company,  Brooklyn,  New  York. 
Precision  Castings  Company,  Syracuse,  New  York. 

The  American  offensive  grenade  was  largely  the  production 
of  the  Single  Service  Package  Corporation  of  New  York,  both 
in  design  and  in  manufacture.  The  body  of  this  grenade  was 
built  of  laminated  paper,  spirally  wound  and  waterproofed 
by  being  dipped  in  paraffine.  The  top  of  the  body  was  a  die 
casting,  into  which  the  firing  mechanism  was  screwed.  Prac- 
tically no  changes  were  made  in  the  design  of  this  weapon  from 
the  time  it  was  first  produced,  and  the  production  record  is 
an  excellent  one. 

Our  earliest  thought  was  that  we  should  need  some  7,000,- 
000  of  these  grenades,  and  orders  for  that  quantity  of  bodies 
were  placed  in  January  and  March,  1918,  with  the  Single 
Service  Package  Corporation.  Then  it  became  necessary  to 
discover  factories  which  could  produce  the  metal  caps.  The 
orders  for  these  were  first  placed  with  the  Acme  Die  Castings 
Company  and  the  National  Lead  Casting  Company,  for 
3,375,000  castings  from  each  concern.  But  these  companies 
failed  to  make  satisfactory  deliveries,  and  in  May,  1918,  a 
contract  for  5,000,000  caps  was  let  to  the  Doehler  Die  Cast- 
ings Company,  which  reached  quantity  production  in  August. 
After  that,  the  Single  Service  Package  Corporation,  the  chief 
contractor,  forged  ahead  in  its  work,  and  on  November  1 1 
was  producing  the  bodies  for  offensive  grenades  at  the  rate  of 
55,000  to  60,000  daily.  By  December  6,  1918,  the  Govern- 
ment had  accepted  6,179,321  completed  bodies.  The  signing 
of  the  armistice  brought  to  an  end  a  project  to  build  17,599,- 
000  additional  grenades  of  this  type. 

The  production  of  gas  grenades  offered  some  peculiar  difB- 
culties.  We  set  out  at  first  to  produce  3,684,530  of  them.  By 
January,  1918,  the  engineers  of  the  Ordnance  Department  had 
completed  the  plans  and  specifications  for  the  American  gas 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  265 

grenade,  and  on  February  12  an  order  for  1,000,000  of  them 
was  placed  with  the  Maxim  Silencer  Company  of  Hartford, 
Connecticut.  The  gas  grenades  were  to  be  delivered  at  the 
filling  plants  complete  except  for  the  detonator  thimbles,  which 
seal  both  gas  and  phosphorus  grenades  and  act  as  sockets  for 
the  firing  mechanism.  It  was  seen  that  the  construction  of  these 
thimbles  might  be  a  choke  point  in  the  construction  of  grenades 
of  both  types,  and  orders  were  early  placed  for  them — 1,500,- 
000  to  be  delivered  by  the  Maxim  Silencer  Company  and  an 
equal  quantity  by  the  Bassic  Company  of  Bridgeport,  Con- 
necticut. On  December  6,  1918,  these  concerns  had  produced 
1,982,731  detonator  thimbles. 

The  body  of  the  gas  grenade  is  built  of  two  sheet-metal  cups 
welded  together  to  be  gas-tight.  Since,  when  we  started  out  on 
this  production,  we  did  not  know  what  kind  of  gas  would  be 
used  or  at  what  pressure  it  would  be  held  within  the  grenade, 
we  specified  that  grenade  bodies  should  be  made  to  hold  an 
air  pressure  of  200  pounds.  The  welding  of  the  cups  frequently 
failed  to  hold  that  pressure,  so  that  the  rejections  of  gas  gre- 
nade bodies  under  this  test  ran  as  high  as  50  per  cent.  But  in 
June,  1918,  the  gas  for  the  grenades  had  been  developed,  and 
we  were  thereupon  able  to  reduce  the  pressure  of  the  standard 
test  to  50  pounds.  Under  such  a  test  the  bodies  readily  passed 
inspection. 

In  September,  1918,  we  let  additional  contracts  for  gas 
grenades — 500,000  to  the  Evinrude  Motor  Company  of  Mil- 
waukee; 500,000  to  the  John  W.  Brown  Manufacturing  Com- 
pany of  Columbus,  Ohio;  and  400,000  to  the  Zenite  Metal 
Company  of  Indianapolis.  On  November  11  gas  grenade 
bodies  were  being  produced  at  the  rate  of  22,000  a  day,  and 
the  total  production  up  to  Decemxbcr  6  was  936,394. 

The  phosphorus  grenade  was  similar  to  the  gas  grenade  in 
construction.  The  plans  and  specifications  for  this  weapon  were 
ready  in  January,  1918.  In  February  the  following  contracts 
were  let :  Metropolitan  Engineering  Company,  Brooklyn,  New 
York,  750,000;  Evinrude  Motor  Company,  Milwaukee,  750,- 
000;  Zenite  Metal  Company,  Indianapolis,  500,000.  On  De- 


266  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

cember  6,  1918,  these  concerns  had  delivered  a  total  of 
521,948  phosphorus  grenade  bodies. 

The  difficulties  which  had  been  experienced  in  the  produc- 
tion of  gas  grenades  were  repeated  in  this  project.  The  Evin- 
rude  Company  was  especially  quick  in  getting  over  the  obsta- 
cles to  quantity  production.  The  Metropolitan  Engineering 
Company,  already  engaged  with  large  orders  for  adapters  and 
boosters  in  the  heavy-gun  ammunition  manufacture  for  the 
Ordnance  Department,  found  that  the  order  for  phosphorus 
grenades  conflicted  to  a  considerable  extent  with  its  previous 
war  work.  The  matter  was  threshed  out  in  the  Ordnance  De- 
partment, which  gave  the  priority  in  this  plant  to  the  adapters 
and  boosters,  with  the  result  that  the  firm  was  able  to  make 
only  a  small  contribution  to  the  total  production  of  phosphorus 
grenade  bodies. 

The  development  of  thermit  grenades  was  still  in  the  experi- 
mental stage  when  the  armistice  was  signed.  There  was  no 
actual  production  in  this  country  of  grenades  of  this  sort.  In 
October,  however,  the  design  of  the  grenade  had  reached  such 
a  stage  that  we  felt  justified  in  letting  a  contract  for  655,450 
die-casting  parts  to  the  Doehler  Die  Castings  Company,  at  its 
Toledo  plant,  and  for  an  equal  number  of  bodies,  with  firing- 
mechanism  assemblies,  to  the  Stewart-Warner  Speedometer 
Corporation  at  Chicago. 

Not  only  did  the  incendiary  grenade  not  get  out  of  the  de- 
velopment stage,  but  a  perfected  model  was  even  regarded  as 
of  doubtful  value  by  the  officers  of  the  American  Expedition- 
ary Forces.  Nevertheless,  the  Chemical  Warfare  Service  was 
of  the  opinion  that  such  a  grenade  should  be  worked  out,  and 
an  order  for  81,000  had  been  given  to  the  Celluloid  Company 
of  Newark,  New  Jersey.  Experimental  work  was  progressing 
satisfactorily  when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

When  the  war  ended,  we  were  adapting  to  American  manu- 
facture a  combination  hand  and  rifle  phosphorus  grenade,  bor- 
rowed from  the  English.  The  body  of  this  grenade  was  built 
of  terneplate,  and  the  grenade  had  a  removable  stem,  so  that 
it  could  be  thrown  by  hand  or  fired  from  the  end  of  a  service 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL     267 

rifle.  The  American  Can  Company  built  1,000  of  these  to  try 
out  the  design  and  strengthen  the  weak  features. 


Production  of  Grenades 


Article 


Dummy  hand  grenade  . 
Practice  hand  grenade  . 
Defensive  hand  grenade 
Offensive  hand  grenade  . 
Gas  hand  grenade 
Phosphorus  hand  grenade 
Thermit  hand  grenade    . 


Completed  to 

Completed  to 

Sent 

Nov.  8, 1918 

Feb.  1, 1919 

overseas 

415,870 

415,870 

3,605,864 

3,605,864 

17,477,245 

25,312,794 

516,533 

5,359,321 

7,000,000 

173,136 

635,551 

1,501,176 

249,239 

505,192 

521,948 

150,600 

Note. — All  the  above  figures,  with  the  exception  of  those  for  grenades 
sent  overseas,  represent  unloaded  grenades. 


RIFLE  GRENADES 

In  the  construction  of  our  rifle  grenades  there  occurred 
another  unfortunate  experience  due  to  a  faulty  design.  The 
rifle  grenade  fits  into  a  holder  at  the  muzzle  of  an  ordinary 
service  rifle.  When  the  rifle  is  fired  the  bullet  passes  through 
a  hole  in  the  middle  of  the  grenade,  and  the  gases  of  the 
discharge,  following  the  bullet,  throw  the  grenade  approxi- 
mately 200  yards.  Any  man  within  75  yards  of  an  exploding 
rifle  grenade  is  likely  to  be  wounded  or  killed.  The  rifle  gre- 
nade is  used  as  both  a  defensive  and  offensive  weapon,  the 
firer  being  well  out  of  range  of  the  exploding  missile. 

In  developing  a  rifle  grenade  for  American  manufacture  our 
engineers  adopted  the  French  Viven-Bessiere  type.  The  French 
service  ammunition  is  larger  than  ours,  and  it  was  therefore 
necessary  to  design  our  grenade  with  a  smaller  hole.  But  in 
the  anxiety  to  produce  this  weapon  in  the  shortest  possible 
time,  the  models  were  not  sufficiently  tested,  and  no  considera- 
tion was  taken  of  the  difference  in  design  between  a  French 
bullet  and  an  American  bullet.  The  result  was  that  the  French 
grenade  did  not  function  well  with  our  ammunition,  its  fail- 


268  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ure  being  due  to  the  splitting  of  the  Springfield  bullet  as  it 
passed  through  the  grenade.  In  May,  1918,  several  months 
after  the  manufacture  of  this  grenade  had  been  in  progress,  the 
entire  undertaking  was  canceled  pending  the  development  of 
new  designs;  and  3,500,000  completed  grenades  had  to  be 
salvaged. 

The  original  contract  for  rifle  grenades  had  been  let  to  the 
Westinghouse  Electric  &  Manufacturing  Company  of  Pitts- 
burg. This  called  for  the  production  of  all  parts  by  the  West- 
inghouse Company  and  the  assembling  of  them  in  the  West- 
inghouse plant  to  the  number  of  5,000,000  grenades.  But  there 
was  such  a  diversity  of  material  employed  in  the  manufacture 
of  rifle  grenades  that  succeeding  contracts  for  parts  and  for 
assembling  were  let  separately.  After  the  rifle  grenade  had  been 
redesigned,  new  contracts  were  let  for  a  total  of  30, 1 1 5,409 
of  them.  In  August,  a  few  weeks  later,  the  daily  production 
of  these  grenades  in  the  various  plants  had  reached  a  total  of 
130,000,  and  by  the  end  of  October  the  daily  production  was 
250,000.  The  goal  toward  which  this  production  was  aiming 
was  the  expected  spring  offensive  of  the  American  Expedi- 
tionary Forces  in  1919.  We  should  have  met  this  event  ade- 
quately, because,  though  only  685,200  American  rifle  grenades 
had  actually  been  shipped  overseas  when  the  fighting  ceased, 
we  had  20,000,000  of  them  ready  for  loading  at  that  time, 
and  the  production  was  already  heavy  and  constantly 
increasing. 

Special  consideration  is  due  the  following-named  firms  for 
their  efforts  in  developing  the  production  of  rifle  grenades : 

Westinghouse  Electric  &  Manufacturing  Company,  Pittsburg,  Penn- 
sylvania. 
Briggs  &  Stratton  Company,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin. 
Holcomb  &  Hoke,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 
Stewart- Warner  Speedometer  Corporation,  Chicago,  Illinois. 
Cutler-Hammer  Manufacturing  Company,  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin. 
American  Radiator  Company,  Buffalo,  New  York. 
Link-Belt  Company,  Indianapolis,  Indiana. 
Doehler  Die  Castings  Company,  Brooklyn,  New  York. 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  269 

TOXIC  GAS  EQUIPMENT 

America  entered  the  war  more  than  two  years  after  the  Ger- 
mans had  made  their  first  gas  attack.  In  those  intervening 
months,  gas  warfare  had  grown  to  be  a  science  in  itself,  requir- 
ing special  organizations  with  each  army  to  handle  it. 

The  employment  of  toxic  gas  had  developed  in  several 
directions.  The  attack  by  the  Germans  upon  the  maskless 
Canadians  at  Ypres  had  been  in  the  form  of  a  gas  cloud 
from  projectors,  these  being  pressure  tanks  with  nozzle  outlets. 
For  some  time  the  Germans  continued  the  use  of  gas  solely 
by  this  method.  Retaliation  by  the  Allies  followed  promptly. 
But  the  employment  of  gas-cloud  attacks  involved  great  labor 
of  preparation  and  was  absolutely  dependent  upon  certain 
combinations  of  weather  conditions.  Therefore  the  launching 
of  a  gas  attack  in  this  fonn  could  not  be  synchronized  with 
other  tactical  operations;  and  the  Allies  were  compelled  to 
evolve  other  means  of  throwing  toxic  gases.  This  they  did  by 
enclosing  the  gas  in  shell  shot  from  the  big  guns  of  the  artillery 
and  in  grenades  thrown  by  hand  from  the  trenches;  also — 
most  effectively  of  all — by  the  agency  of  an  ingenious  inven- 
tion of  the  British  known  as  the  Livens  projector. 

The  Livens  projector  was  deadly  in  its  effect,  for  it  could 
throw  gas  bombs,  or  drums,  into  the  enemy's  ranks  suddenly 
and  in  great  quantity.  It  is  notable  that,  although  the  British 
used  this  device  with  great  success  throughout  much  of  the 
latter  period  of  the  war,  and  though  the  French  and  Ameri- 
cans also  adopted  it  and  used  it  freely,  the  Germans  were  never 
able  to  discover  what  the  device  was  that  threw  such  havoc 
into  their  ranks,  nor  were  they  ever  able  to  produce  anything 
similar  to  it.  The  Livens  projector  remained  a  deep  secret  until 
the  close  of  hostilities,  and  both  the  government  offices  in 
Washington,  where  the  design  was  adapted  to  American  manu- 
facture, and  the  American  plants  producing  the  parts  were 
always  closely  guarded  against  enemy  espionage. 

Without  going  into  details  of  the  construction  of  the  Livens 
projector,  it  may  be  said  that  it  was  usually  fired  by  electricity 
in  sets  of  twenty-five  or  multiples  thereof.  The  drums,  which 


270  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

were  of  cylindrical  shell  about  twenty-four  inches  long  and 
eight  inches  in  diameter,  were  ejected  from  long  steel  tubes, 
or  barrels,  buried  in  the  ground  and  resting  against  pressed- 
steel  base  plates.  At  the  throwing  of  an  electric  switch  a  veri- 
table rain  of  the  big  shell,  as  many  as  2,500  of  them  some- 
times, with  their  lethal  contents,  would  come  hurtling  down 
upon  the  enemy.  The  Livens  projectors  could  throw  their  gas 
drums  nearly  a  mile. 

The  projector  was  entirely  a  new  type  of  munition  for  our 
manufacturers  to  handle.  The  Trench  Warfare  Section  of  the 
Ordnance  Department  took  up  the  matter  late  in  1917  and  by 
May,  1918,  had  designed  the  weapon  for  home  manufacture. 
Early  in  June  the  contracts  were  allotted  for  barrels  and  gas 
drums,  or  shell.  The  production  of  barrels  was  exclusively  in 
the  hands  of  the  National  Tube  Company  of  Pittsburg,  Penn- 
sylvania, and  the  Harrisburg  Pipe  &  Pipe  Bending  Company 
of  Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania.  These  companies  reached  the 
production  stage  in  August,  1918,  and  completed  about  63,000 
barrels  before  the  armistice  was  signed.  Their  respective  plants 
reached  a  daily  production  rate  of  approximately  600  barrels. 

Somewhat  later  in  the  spring  of  1918  the  contracts  were 
closed  for  the  base  plates  on  which  the  barrels  rest  when  ready 
for  firing,  for  muzzle  covers,  and  for  various  other  accessories. 
Over  100,000  base  plates  were  produced  by  the  Gier  Pressed 
Steel  Company,  of  Lansing,  Michigan,  and  the  American  Pul- 
ley Company,  of  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania.  The  Perkins- 
Campbell  Company,  of  Philadelphia,  built  the  muzzle  cov- 
ers— 66,180  of  them.  Cartridge  cases  were  manufactured  by 
Art  Metal  (Inc.),  of  Newark,  New  Jersey,  and  the  Russakov 
Can  Company,  of  Chicago,  the  former  producing  288,838  and 
the  latter  47,511.  The  Ensign-Bickford  Company,  of  Sims- 
bury,  Connecticut,  produced  334,300  fuses  for  Livens  shell; 
the  Artillery  Fuse  Company,  of  Wilmington,  Delaware,  assem- 
bled 26,000  firing  mechanisms;  the  E.  I.  DuPont  Company, 
at  its  Pompton  Lakes  (New  Jersey)  plant,  manufactured 
20,000  detonators;  487,350  detonators  were  produced  by  the 
JEtna.  Explosives  Company,  at  Port  Ewen,  New  York;  and 


Photo    from    Oidnarut    1)  rf^artmont 

VERTICAL  CROSS  SECTION  OF  LIVENS  PROJECTOR 
IN  GROUND  READY  FOR  FIRING 


Photo  from  11.   C.  Dodge,  Inc. 

MANUFACTURING  TRENCH  MORTAR  SHELL 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


6-INCH  TRENCH  MORTAR 


Photo  by  Signal  Corps 


FIRING  3-INCH  MORTAR 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL     271 

the  American  Can  Company,  at  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  assem- 
bled 256,231  firing  mechanisms.  Shear  wire  pistols  were  used 
in  the  operation  of  the  Livens  projector.  The  Edison  Phono- 
graph Company,  of  Orange,  New  Jersey,  produced  181,900 
of  these,  and  the  Artillery  Fuse  Company,  of  Wilmington, 
Delaware,  1 1,747.  The  adapters  and  boosters  of  the  shell  were 
all  built  by  the  John  Thompson  Press  Company,  of  New 
York.  The  W^aterbury  Brass  Goods  Company,  of  Waterbury, 
Connecticut,  made  the  fuse  casing.  Adapters  and  boosters  to 
the  number  of  334,500  were  turned  out  by  the  former,  and 
299,900  fuse  casings  by  the  latter. 

The  manufacture  of  gas  drums  for  the  projectors  was  de- 
layed for  some  time  because  of  difficulties  in  welding  certain 
parts  of  the  drums.  Acetylene  and  arc  welding  processes  were 
tried  out,  and  a  good  many  shell  were  made  by  such  welding; 
but  the  lack  of  expert  welders  for  these  processes,  and  the 
rejections  of  shell  due  to  leakage  in  the  welded  joints,  caused 
the  manufacturer  to  turn  to  fire  welding,  the  process  for  which 
had  been  developed  by  the  Air-tight  Steel  Tank  Company,  of 
Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania.  At  the  time  the  armistice  was  signed 
the  welding  problem  had  been  overcome  and  the  production 
was  going  forward  at  a  rate  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the 
expected  fighting  in  the  spring  of  1919.  The  shell  delivered 
were  produced  as  follows:  By  the  Federal  Pressed  Steel  Com- 
pany, of  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  5,609;  by  the  Pressed  Steel 
Tank  Company,  also  of  Milwaukee,  20,536;  by  the  Air-tight 
Steel  Tank  Company,  of  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  600;  by  the 
National  Tube  Company,  of  Pittsburg,  27,098;  by  the  Trus- 
con  Steel  Company,  of  Youngstown,  Ohio,  19,880.  The  entire 
Livens  shell  program,  as  it  existed  in  November,  1918,  called 
for  the  production  of  334,000  shell. 

TRENCH  MORTARS 

The  production  of  trench  mortars  was  not  only  an  important 
part  of  our  ordnance  program,  but  it  was  also  an  undertaking 
absolutely  new  to  American  experience.  Not  only  did  we  have 
to  produce  mortars,  but  we  had  to  supply  them  with  shell  in 


272  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

great  quantities — in  itself  an  enterprise  of  no  mean  propor- 
tions. 

Some  seven  different  types  of  mortars  were  in  use  when  we 
came  into  the  war.  Our  ordnance  program  contemplated  the 
manufacture  of  all  seven,  but  we  actually  succeeded  in  bring- 
ing only  four  types  into  production.  These  four  were  the  Brit- 
ish Newton-Stokes  mortars  of  the  3-inch,  4-inch,  and  6-inch 
calibers,  and  the  French  240-millimeter  mortar,  which  had 
also  been  adopted  by  the  British.  As  usual  in  the  adoption  of 
foreign  devices,  we  had  to  redesign  these  weapons  to  make 
them  adaptable  to  American  shop  methods.  We  encountered 
much  difficulty  throughout  the  job,  largely  because  of  the 
insufficiency  of  the  information  furnished  from  abroad,  and 
because,  in  spite  of  this  handicap,  we  had  to  produce  mortars 
and  ammunition  that  would  be  interchangeable  with  French 
and  British  munitions  stocks. 

The  first  one  of  these  weapons  which  we  took  up  for  pro- 
duction here  was  the  3-inch  Newton-Stokes.  The  first  contract 
for  the  manufacture  of  mortars  of  this  size  was  placed  with  the 
Crane  Company,  of  Chicago,  on  November  8,  1917,  for  1,830 
mortars.  This  concern  at  once  arranged  with  the  Ohio  Seam- 
less Tube  Company,  of  Shelby,  Ohio,  for  the  drawing  of  steel 
tubes  for  the  mortar  barrels.  The  latter  concern,  however,  was 
already  handling  large  contracts  for  the  Navy  and  for  the  air- 
craft program,  and  these  operations  took  priority  over  the 
mortar  contracts.  But  the  Crane  Company  took  advantage  of 
the  interim  to  build  the  accessories  for  the  weapons — the 
tripods,  clinometers,  base  plates,  and  tool  boxes.  In  the  spring 
of  1918  the  company  received  the  first  barrel  tubes  and  began 
producing  completed  weapons.  But  when  these  mortars  were 
sent  to  the  proving  ground,  the  test-firing  deformed  the  barrels 
and  broke  the  metal  bases.  Finally  it  was  decided  that  the 
propelling  explosive  used  was  not  a  suitable  one  for  the  pur- 
pose. Another  was  substituted.  The  new  propellant  permitted 
as  great  a  range  of  fire  without  damage  to  the  mortar  in  firing. 

The  Crane  Company  was  eventually  able  to  reach  a  pro- 
duction of  thirty- three  of  the  3-inch  mortars  a  day,  and  up 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL     273 

to  December  5,  1918,  it  had  built  1,803  completed  weapons, 
together  with  the  necessary  tools  and  spare  parts.  In  the  early 
fall  of  1918  an  additional  contract  for  677  of  these  mortars 
was  placed  with  the  Crane  Company  and  another  for  2,000 
mortars  of  this  size  with  the  International  Harvester  Com- 
pany of  Chicago.  Neither  of  the  two  latter  contracts  ever  came 
to  the  production  stage. 

A  few  days  after  the  original  contract  for  3-inch  mortars  was 
let,  the  Trench  Warfare  Section  took  up  the  matter  of  pro- 
ducing ammunition  for  these  weapons.  Two  sorts  of  shell  were 
to  be  required — live  shell  filled  with  high  explosive  and  prac- 
tice shell  made  of  malleable  iron.  The  original  program, 
adopted  in  November,  1917,  called  for  the  production  of 
5,342,000  live  shell  for  the  3-inch  mortars  and  1,500,000 
practice  shell. 

The  plan  was  adopted  of  building  these  shell  of  lap-welded 
3-inch  steel  tubing,  cut  into  proper  lengths.  The  contracts  for 
the  finished  machined  and  assembled  shell  were  placed  with 
the  General  Motors  Corporation  at  its  Saginaw  (Michigan) 
plant,  with  H.  C.  Dodge  (Inc.),  at  South  Boston,  Massachu- 
setts, and  with  the  Metropolitan  Engineering  Company,  of 
Brooklyn,  New  York.  In  order  to  facilitate  production,  the 
Government  agreed  to  furnish  the  steel  tubing.  For  this  pur- 
pose it  ordered  from  the  National  Tube  Company,  of  Pitts- 
burg, Pennsylvania,  1,618,929  pieces  of  steel  tubing,  each 
eleven  inches  in  length,  and  from  the  Allegheny  Steel  Com- 
pany, at  Brackenridge,  Pennsylvania,  2,332,319  running  feet 
of  tubing.  These  tube  contracts  were  filled  by  the  early  spring 
of  1918.  The  railroad  congestion  of  February  and  March, 
1918,  held  up  the  delivery  of  tubing,  but  the  assembly  plants 
utilized  the  time  in  tooling  up  for  the  future  production.  All 
the  plants  thereafter  soon  reached  a  quantity  production,  the 
General  Motors  Corporation  in  particular  tuning  up  its  shop 
system  until  it  was  able  to  reach  a  maximum  daily  production, 
in  a  ten-hour  shift,  of  35,618  completed  shell. 

The  casting  of  malleable  iron  bodies  for  the  practice  shell 
of  this  caliber  was  turned  over  to  the  Erie  Malleable  Iron  Com- 


274  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

pany,  of  Erie,  Pennsylvania,  and  to  the  National  Malleable 
Castings  Company,  with  plants  at  Cleveland,  Chicago,  Indian- 
apolis, and  Toledo.  The  former  concern  cast  196,673  bodies 
and  the  latter  1,015,005.  The  Gorham  Manufacturing  Com- 
pany, of  Providence,  Rhode  Island;  the  Standard  Parts  Com- 
pany, of  Cleveland,  Ohio;  and  the  New  Process  Gear  Corpora- 
tion, of  Syracuse,  New  York,  machined  and  assembled  the 
practice  shell.  When  the  armistice  was  declared,  these  three 
contracts  were  approximately  seven-tenths  complete. 

We  were  dissatisfied  with  our  3-inch  shell,  for  the  reason 
that  they  tumbled  in  air  and  were  visible  to  the  eye.  The 
French  had  developed  a  mortar  shell  on  the  streamline  prin- 
ciple which  was  invisible  in  flight  and  had  twice  the  range  of 
ours.  Had  the  war  continued,  the  Trench  Warfare  Section 
would  have  produced  streamline  shell  for  mortars. 

The  second  mortar  project  undertaken  was  the  manufac- 
ture of  the  240-millimeter  weapon.  This  was  the  largest  mortar 
which  we  produced,  its  barrel  having  a  diameter  of  approxi- 
mately ten  inches.  It  proved  to  be  one  of  the  toughest  nuts  to 
crack  in  the  whole  mortar  undertaking.  The  British  designs  of 
this  French  weapon  we  found  to  be  quite  unsuited  to  our  fac- 
tory methods,  and  for  the  sake  of  expediency  we  frequently 
modified  them  in  the  course  of  the  development.  The  total 
contracts  called  for  the  production  of  938  mortars. 

It  was  obvious  that  the  manufacture  of  this  and  of  other 
larger  mortars  would  fall  into  three  phases.  The  forging  of 
barrels,  breechblocks,  and  breech  slides  was  a  separate  type  of 
work,  and  we  allotted  the  contracts  for  this  work  to  the 
Standard  Forging  Company  of  Indiana  Harbor,  Indiana.  The 
machining  of  these  parts  to  the  fine  dimensions  required  by  the 
design  was  an  entirely  separate  phase  of  manufacturing,  and 
we  placed  this  work  with  the  American  Laundry  Machine 
Company  of  Cincinnati.  Still  a  third  class  of  work  was  the 
assembling  of  the  completed  mortars,  and  this  contract  went 
to  the  David  Lupton  Sons  Company  of  Philadelphia,  who  also 
engaged  to  manufacture  the  metal  and  timber  bases  and  firing 
mechanisms.  These  big  mortars  had  to  have  mobile  mountings, 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  275 

and  the  contract  for  the  mortar  carts  we  placed  with  the 
International  Harvester  Company  of  Chicago.  These  contracts 
were  signed  in  December,  1917. 

The  Lupton  plant  had  difficulty  in  securing  the  heavy- 
machinery  needed  for  this  and  for  other  mortar  contracts,  its 
machinery  being  held  up  by  the  freight  congestion.  Early  in 
1918  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  advised  us  to  rede- 
sign the  240-millimeter  mortar  to  give  it  a  stronger  barrel. 
Consequently  all  work  was  stopped  until  this  could  be  done. 
The  first  mortars  of  the  new  design  to  be  tested  were  still 
unsatisfactory  with  respect  to  the  strength  of  the  barrels;  and 
the  Standard  Forging  Company  urged  that  nickel  steel  be 
substituted  for  basic  open-hearth  steel  as  the  material  for  the 
barrels.  This  change  proved  to  be  justified. 

There  was  also  trouble  at  the  shops  of  the  American  Laun- 
dry Machine  Company,  its  equipment  not  having  the  preci- 
sion to  do  machining  of  the  type  required  in  these  weapons. 
Accordingly  a  new  machining  contract  was  made  with  the 
Symington-Anderson  Company  of  Rochester,  New  York, 
which  concern  was  eventually  able  to  reach  a  production  of 
twenty  machined  barrels  per  week. 

In  all,  we  produced  twenty-four  of  the  240-millimeter  mor- 
tars in  this  country.  Certain  of  the  parts  were  manufactured 
up  to  the  total  requirements  of  the  contracts,  but  others  were 
not  built  in  such  numbers.  The  International  Harvester  Com- 
pany built  all  the  999  carts  ordered. 

The  production  of  shell  for  these  big  mortars  was  another 
difficult  undertaking.  After  consultation  with  manufacturers 
we  designed  shell  of  two  different  types.  One  of  these  was  a 
shell  of  pressed  plates  welded  together  longitudinally;  and 
a  contract  for  the  production  of  283,096  of  these  was  placed 
with  the  Metropolitan  Engineering  Company.  The  other  was 
of  two  steel  hemispheres  welded  together.  The  Michigan 
Stamping  Company,  of  Detroit,  undertook  to  build  50,000  of 
these.  These  shell  contracts  were  placed  in  December,  1917. 
The  Michigan  Stamping  Company  had  to  wait  five  months 
before  it  could  secure  and  install  its  complete  equipment  of 


276  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

machinery-.  It  was  September  before  all  the  difficulties  in  the 
Detroit  plant's  project  could  be  overcome  and  quantity  pro- 
duction started.  The  concern  eventually,  before  and  after  the 
signing  of  the  armistice,  built  9,185  shell  of  this  type  at  a 
maximum  rate  of  fifty-six  a  day. 

Greater  promise  seemed  to  attend  the  Metropolitan  Engi- 
neering Company's  project  to  build  shell  of  pressed-out  plates, 
electrically  welded.  The  Government  undertook  to  furnish  the 
steel  plates  for  this  work  and  secured  from  the  American  Roll- 
ing Mills  Company  of  Middletown,  Ohio,  a  total  production 
of  6,757  tons  of  them.  The  Metropolitan  Engineering  Com- 
pany had  great  difficulty  in  perfecting  a  proper  welding 
process;  and  the  concern  lost  a  great  deal  of  money  on  the 
contract,  yet  cheerfully  continued  its  development  without 
prospect  of  recompense,  in  order  that  we  might  have  in  this 
country  the  knowledge  of  how  to  build  such  shell.  In  all, 
including  production  after  the  armistice  was  signed,  the  Metro- 
politan Engineering  Company  built  136,189  shell  bodies  of 
this  size,  at  a  maximum  rate  of  987  a  day. 

During  the  summer  of  1918  a  single-piece  shell  body  of 
the  240-millimeter  size,  produced  by  a  deep-drawing  process, 
was  worked  out.  A  contract  for  125,000  such  bodies  was  given 
to  the  Ireland-Matthews  Manufacturing  Company  of  Detroit, 
Michigan.  The  armistice  brought  this  contract  to  an  end  before 
it  had  produced  any  shell  of  this  new  and  most  promising 
type. 

Early  in  1918  we  received  the  first  samples  of  the  6-inch 
trench  mortar.  By  April  all  the  plans  were  ready  for  Ameri- 
can production.  Again  this  work  was  divided  by  types.  The 
National  Tube  Company  of  Pittsburg  contracted  to  make 
510  rough  forgings  of  mortar  barrels  at  its  Christy  Park  plant. 
The  Symington-Anderson  Company  undertook  to  machine 
these  barrels.  The  David  Lupton  Sons  Company  agreed  to 
assemble  the  mortars,  as  well  as  to  produce  the  metal  and 
timber  bases  for  them.  The  first  machined  barrels  reached  the 
Lupton  plant  in  June  and  found  bases  ready  for  them.  But 
while  assembling  was  in  progress  the  American  Expeditionary 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  277 

Forces  cabled  that  the  British  producers  of  mortars  had 
changed  their  designs,  and  that  we  must  suspend  our  manu- 
facture until  we  could  adopt  the  changes.  It  was  some  weeks 
later  when  the  altered  plans  reached  us;  nevertheless,  we  were 
able  to  make  good  our  original  promise  to  deliver  forty-eight 
6-inch  Newton-Stokes  mortars  at  the  port  of  embarkation  in 
October,  1918. 

Meanwhile  we  had  increased  the  contracts  by  an  additional 
requirement  of  1,577  mortars  of  this  size.  The  National  Tube 
Company  eventually  reached  a  maximum  daily  production 
of  sixty  barrel  forgings.  The  Symington-Anderson  Company 
machined  the  barrels  finally  at  the  rate  of  thirty-three  a  day. 
As  many  as  eleven  proof-fired  guns  a  day  came  from  the  David 
Lupton  Sons  Company. 

An  interesting  fact  in  connection  with  the  production  of 
shell  for  the  6-inch  mortars  is  that  they  were  built  principally 
by  American  makers  of  stoves.  The  6-inch  mortar  shell  bodies, 
being  of  cast  iron  instead  of  steel,  were  adaptable  to  manufac- 
ture in  stove  works.  Each  shell  weighed  forty  pounds  without 
its  explosive  charge.  Such  shell  were  used  at  the  front  for 
heavy  demolition  purposes. 

The  contracts  for  these  shell  were  placed  in  March,  1918. 
The  Trench  Warfare  Section  was  immediately  called  upon  to 
secure  favorable  priority  for  the  pig  iron  required  for  this  pur- 
pose. The  various  stove  works  did  not  have  the  necessary 
machinery  for  building  the  shell,  and  in  each  a  special  equip- 
ment had  to  be  built.  At  the  tests  the  first  castings  which  came 
through  the  foundry  were  found  to  leak,  and  this  setback 
prescribed  further  experiments  in  the  design,  holding  up  pro- 
duction until  July,  1918. 

Because  of  the  many  troubles  encountered  in  this  work,  the 
various  stove  makers  formed,  in  the  summer  of  1918,  an  asso- 
ciation which  they  called  the  Six-inch  Trench-mortar  Shell 
Manufacturers'  Association.  This  association  held  monthly 
meetings,  and  its  members  visited  the  various  plants  where 
shell  castings  were  being  made.  The  United  States  Radiator 
Corporation,  the  Foster-Merriam  Company,  and  the  Michigan 


278  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Stove  Company  were  especially  active  in  improving  methods 
for  making  these  shell. 

The  various  concerns  which  produced  6-inch  mortar  shell 
and  the  amounts  turned  out  were  as  follows : 


Foster-Merriam  Company,  Meriden,  Connecticut 
U.  S.  Radiator  Corporation,  Detroit,  Michigan  . 
Globe  Stove  &  Range  Company,  Kokomo,  Indiana 
Rathbone,  Sard  &  Company,  Albany,  New  York 
Michigan  Stove  Company,  Detroit,  Michigan     . 


33,9^9 

240,700 
17,460 
97,114 

100,000 


The  concerns  named  below,  shortly  before  the  armistice  was 
signed,  received  contracts  for  the  production  of  6-inch  mortar 
shell,  orders  ranging  in  quantity  from  50,000  to  150,000,  but 
none  of  these  concerns  started  production: 

William  Crane  Company,  Jersey  City,  New  Jersey. 
Frontier  Iron  Works,  Buffalo,  New  York, 
Henry  E.  Pridmore  (Inc.),  Chicago,  Illinois. 
Best  Foundry  Company,  Bedford,  Ohio. 
McCord  &  Company,  Chicago,  Illinois. 

It  was  not  until  July,  1918,  that  the  plans  were  ready  for 
the  4-inch  Newton-Stokes  trench  mortars.  The  American  Expe- 
ditionary Forces  estimated  that  they  would  require  480  of 
these  weapons.  A  total  of  500  drawn  barrel  tubes  was  ordered 
from  the  Ohio  Seamless  Tube  Company  of  Shelby,  Ohio.  This 
concern  was  able  to  ship  one-fifth  of  its  order  within  ten  days 
after  receiving  it.  The  barrels  were  sent  to  the  Rock  Island 
Arsenal  for  machining.  The  Crane  Company  of  Chicago  held 
the  contract  for  building  the  bases,  tripods,  spare  parts,  and 
tools,  and  also  for  the  assembling  of  the  completed  mortars. 
This  factory  was  already  equipped  with  tools  for  this  work, 
since  it  had  been  building  similar  parts  for  3-inch  mortars; 
in  August,  almost  within  a  month  of  receiving  the  contract, 
the  Crane  Company  was  producing  completed  4-inch  mortars 
and  sending  them  to  the  Rock  Island  Arsenal  for  proof  firing. 
The  Ohio  Seamless  Tube  Company  reached  a  high  daily  pro- 
duction of  eighty-three  barrel  forgings;  the  Rock  Island  Arse- 


Photo  from    Ordnance  Department 

6-INCH  TRENCH  MORTAR  SHELL 


Photo  from   Ordnance  Department 

240.MILLIMETER  TRENCH  MORTAR  WITH  SHELL 
READY  FOR  ACTION 


Photo  from  Crane  Company 


WAR  PLANT  ENGAGED  IN  MANUFACTURE  OF 
TRENCH  MORTARS 


Photo  from  David  Lupton  Sons   Company 

ASSEMBLING  LARGE  TRENCH  MORTARS 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL  279 

nal,  ten  machined  barrels  a  day;  and  the  Crane  Company, 
nineteen  assembled  mortars  a  day. 

We  planned  to  build  only  smoke  shell  and  gas  shell  for  the 
4-inch  mortars.  Large  contracts  for  various  parts  of  these  shell 
were  placed,  and  the  enterprise  was  gaining  great  size,  when 
the  armistice  was  declared;  but  no  finished  smoke  shell,  and 
only  a  few  gas  shell,  for  4-inch  trench  mortars  had  been  pro- 
duced. The  contracts  for  the  smoke  shell  were  let  in  October, 
1918,  and  work  had  not  gone  further  than  the  procurement  of 
raw  material  when  the  armistice  came.  A  large  number  of  con- 
tractors expected  to  produce  parts  for  the  4-inch  gas  shell, 
and  considerable  quantities  of  the  raw  materials  were  actually 
produced;  but  only  one  of  the  machining  and  assembling  con- 
tractors, the  Paige-Detroit  Motor  Car  Company,  actually  com- 
pleted any  of  these  shell,  and  production  at  this  plant  did  not 
start  until  December  5,  1918. 


Froduction  of  Trench  Mortars  and  Their  Ammunition 

Trench  Mortars 

Completions     Completions 


Size 


to  Nov.  II, 
1918 


to  Feb.  I, 
1919 


Shipped 
overseas 


3-inch 

4-inch 

6-inch 

240-millimeter  (9.45  inches) 


1,609 

444 

368 

29 


1,830 
778 
500 

30 


Trench-Mortar  Shell 


Kind 


Completions  Completions 

to  Nov.  II,  to  Feb.  i, 

1918  1919 

{unloaded^  {unloaded^ 


843 
'48 


Shipped 
overseas 
{loaded) 


3-inch  live 

3-inch  practice      .... 

4-inch  gas 

4-inch  smoke 

6-inch   live 

240-millimeter   (9.45  inches) 


Rounds 

3,136,275 
607,178 


292,882 
67,829 


Rounds 

3,741,237 

782,340 
212 


492,404 
131,124 


Rounds 
157,785 


28o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

TOXIC  GAS  SETS 

Another  extensive  project  in  the  trench-warfare  program 
was  the  manufacture  of  the  so-called  toxic  gas  sets.  Each  set 
consisted  of  a  one-man  portable  cylinder  equipped  with  a 
nozzle  and  a  firing  mechanism.  It  was  ready  for  firing  as  soon 
as  placed  in  position. 

In  August,  1918,  the  toxic-gas-set  project  was  taken  up  by 
the  Trench  Warfare  Section.  Contracts  for  cylinders  were 
awarded  to  the  Ireland-Matthews  Manufacturing  Company, 
of  Detroit,  Michigan,  which  produced  13,642  cylinders,  and  to 
the  American  Car  &  Foundry  Company,  at  its  Milton,  Penn- 
sylvania, plant,  which  turned  out  11,046  cylinders. 

The  Pittsburg  Reinforcing,  Brazing  &  Machine  Company 
produced  9,765  valves  for  the  cylinders  in  two  months  after 
receiving  the  contract.  The  Yale  &  Towne  Manufacturing 
Company,  of  Stamford,  Connecticut,  which  received  the  con- 
tract for  nozzles  on  September  5,  1918,  manufactured  20,501 
of  them  before  the  armistice  was  signed;  and  J.  N.  Smith  & 
Company,  of  Detroit,  Michigan,  who  did  not  receive  their 
contract  until  September  26,  built  3,252  nozzles  before  the 
fighting  stopped.  The  Liquid  Carbonic  Company,  of  Chicago, 
and  the  Ruud  Manufacturing  Company,  of  Pittsburg,  had  the 
contracts  for  the  firing  mechanism ;  but  none  of  these  was  pro- 
duced, because  at  the  time  the  armistice  was  signed  the  firing 
mixture  to  be  used  with  the  cylinders  had  not  been-  developed. 

In  connection  with  the  production  of  materials  for  gas  war- 
fare the  Ordnance  Department  also  designed  several  types  of 
containers  for  the  shipment  of  poison  gas,  these  including  not 
only  the  portable  cylinders,  but  also  larger  tanks  and  even 
tank  cars. 

PYROTECHNICS 

A  FEW  years  ago,  when  we  allowed  the  adventurous  Ameri- 
can boy  to  blow  off  his  fingers  and  hands  by  the  indiscriminate 
use  of  explosives  in  celebrating  the  nation's  birthday,  we  had 
an  extensive  fireworks  industry  in  this  country.  But  the  spread 
of  the  Sane-Fourth  reform  had  virtually  killed  this  manufac- 
ture, so  that  when  we  entered  the  war  there  were  only  three  or 


TRENCH- WARFARE  MATERIAL  281 

four  plants  in  the  United  States  making  fireworks.  These  con- 
cerns kept  the  trade  secrets  closely  guarded.  As  we  approached 
the  brink  of  hostilities  it  was  evident  that  we  should  have  to 
build  up  a  large  production  capacity  for  the  pyrotechnics  de- 
manded by  the  various  new  types  of  fighting  which  had  sprung 
into  existence  since  1914.  Fireworks  were  extensively  used, 
principally  for  signaling  at  night  and  as  an  aid  to  aviators  in 
the  dark. 

One  of  the  men  to  foresee  this  need  was  Lewis  Nixon,  who 
had  long  been  in  the  public  eye  and  was  known  especially  for 
his  advocacy  of  an  American  merchant  marine.  He  organized 
a  pyrotechnics  concern  known  as  the  Nixon  Fulgent  Products 
Company,  built  a  plant  at  Brunswick,  New  Jersey,  and  was 
ready  to  talk  business  with  the  Government  when  the  war 
began.  Also  there  had  long  been  in  existence  that  perennial 
delight  of  children  and  adults  alike,  known  as  Pain's  Fire- 
works, the  spectacular  exhibitions  of  which  are  familiar  to 
most  city  dwellers  in  the  United  States.  This  concern  had  its 
own  manufacturing  plant,  which  was  ready  to  expand  to  meet 
government  war  requirements.  In  addition,  two  other  concerns 
of  the  formerly  declining  industry  were  ready  to  increase  their 
facilities  and  produce  pyrotechnics  for  war  purposes.  These 
were  the  Unexcelled  Manufacturing  Company,  of  New  York, 
and  the  National  Fireworks  Company,  of  West  Hanover, 
Massachusetts.  The  four  concerns  proved  to  be  able  to  meet 
every  war  requirement  we  had. 

Before  the  war  some  few  military  pyrotechnics  had  been 
procured  by  the  Signal  Corps,  the  Coast  Artillery,  the  Engi- 
neer Corps,  and  also  by  the  Navy;  but  on  September  27,  1917, 
the  design  of  all  army  pyrotechnics  was  centralized  in  the 
Trench  Warfare  Section.  Much  experimentation  was  neces- 
sary before  specifications  could  be  prepared,  for  the  entire  fire- 
signaling  field  had  long  been  in  confusion.  We  had  made  our 
own  designs  and  were  proceeding  with  production  in  the  spring 
of  1918,  when  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  made  the 
positive  recommendation  that  the  entire  French  program  of 
pyrotechnics  be  adopted  by  the  United  States.  This  meant  a 


282  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

fresh  start  in  the  business,  but  nevertheless  pyrotechnic  devices 
were  developed  to  meet  all  our  needs.  These  devices  included 
signal  rockets,  parachute  rockets,  signal  pistols  and  their 
ammunition,  position  and  signal  lights,  flares,  smoke  torches, 
and  lights  to  be  thrown  by  the  V.  B.  discharger,  the  French 
device  attached  to  the  end  of  the  rifle  in  which  a  rifle  grenade 
fits. 

At  the  outset  of  our  efforts  we  started  to  build  signal  rockets, 
position  lights,  rifle  lights,  signal  lights,  and  lights  for  use  with 
the  Very  signal  pistol.  The  Very  signal  pistol  which  we 
adopted  first  had  the  caliber  of  a  lo-gauge  shotgun,  and  its 
cartridges  resembled  shotgun  shells  in  appearance,  although 
they  contained  Roman-candle  balls  of  various  colors  instead 
of  leaden  shot.  The  orders  from  abroad  in  the  spring  of  1918 
changed  the  caliber  of  the  Very  pistol  to  25  millimeters  and 
brought  into  our  requirements  some  sixteen  different  styles  of 
star  and  parachute  cartridges.  In  addition  to  these,  there  were 
required  about  twenty  styles  of  star  and  parachute  cartridges 
for  the  French  V,  B.  discharger.  The  recommendations  from 
France  brought  in  thirteen  new  styles  of  signal  rockets,  as  well 
as  smoke  torches,  wing-tip  flares  for  airplanes,  parachute  flares 
for  lighting  the  ground  under  bombing  airplanes,  and  also 
twelve  styles  of  cartridges  for  a  new  35-millimeter  Very  pistol 
for  the  use  of  aviators. 

After  we  received  these  instructions  there  was  great  uncer- 
tainty here  as  to  the  quantity  of  each  item  that  should  be  pro- 
duced; and  this  matter  was  not  settled  until  August  5,  1918, 
when  an  enormous  program  of  requirements  was  issued.  At 
first  it  seemed  that  the  Government  itself  must  build  new 
factories  to  provide  for  these  needs,  but  a  careful  examination 
showed  that  the  existing  facilities  could  be  expanded  to  take 
care  of  the  production.  The  placing  of  contracts  in  this  under- 
taking was  under  way  when  the  armistice  stopped  the  work. 

The  table  subjoined  to  this  chapter  indicates  the  size  of  the 
pyrotechnic  undertaking  and  also  what  was  accomplished.  All 
this  production  came  from  the  plants  of  the  four  companies 
which  have  been  named.  In  addition  to  the  fireworks  them- 


TRENCH-WARFARE  MATERIAL  283 

selves,  accessories  were  produced  by  a  number  of  other  con- 
cerns. The  Japan  Paper  Company,  New  York  City,  manufac- 
tured and  imported  from  Japan  approximately  3,000.000 
paper  parachutes.  The  Remington  Arms  Company,  New 
Haven,  Connecticut,  built  about  2,500,000  10-gauge  signal- 
pistol  cartridges,  minus  the  stars  they  contained.  The  Empire 
Art  Metal  Company,  College  Point,  New  York,  produced 
nearly  2,000,000  Very  pistol  cartridge  cases.  The  Winchester 
Repeating  Arms  Company,  Bridgeport,  Connecticut,  supplied 
nearly  5,000,000  primers  for  these  cartridges.  Rose  Brothers 
&  Company,  Lancaster,  Pennsylvania,  produced  65,600  silk 
parachutes  for  Vtry  cartridges.  Cheney  Brothers,  South  Man- 
chester, Connecticut;  D.  G.  Dery  (Inc.),  Allentown,  Pennsyl- 
vania; Stehli  Silk  Corporation,  New  York  City;  Sauquoit  Silk 
Company,  Philadelphia ;  Lewis  Roessel  &  Company,  Hazleton, 
Pennsylvania;  Schwarzenback-Huber  Company,  New  York 
City;  and  the  Duplane  Silk  Corporation,  Hazleton,  Pennsyl- 
vania, produced  a  total  of  1,231,728  yards  of  silk  for  para- 
chutes to  float  airplane  flares.  The  parachutes  themselves  for 
the  airplane  flares,  a  total  of  28,570,  were  manufactured  by 
the  Duplane  Silk  Corporation;  Folmer-Clogg  Company,  Lan- 
caster, Pennsylvania;  and  Jacob  Gerhardt  Company,  Hazle- 
ton, Pennsylvania.  The  Edward  G.  Budd  Manufacturing 
Company,  Philadelphia,  built  41,020  metal  cases  for  the  air- 
plane flares. 

We  also  contracted  for  the  production  of  many  thousands 
of  Very  signal  pistols.  Before  the  original  program  was  can- 
celed the  Remington  Arms  Company  had  produced  24,460  of 
the  10-gauge  pistols  in  contracts  calling  for  a  total  output  of 
35,000.  In  August,  1918,  we  let  contracts  for  135,000  of  the 
25-millimeter  pistols  and  for  approximately  30,000  of  the 
35-millimeter  pistols.  The  A.  H.  Fox  Gun  Company  com- 
pleted 4,193  of  the  smaller  pistols  and  the  Scott  &  Fetzger 
Machine  Company  turned  out  7,750  of  them.  Other  concerns 
which  had  taken  contracts,  but  had  not  come  into  production 
when  the  armistice  was  signed,  were  the  National  Tool  & 


284  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Manufacturing  Company,  the  Doehler  Die  Castings  Company, 
the  Hammond  Typewriter  Company,  and  Parker  Brothers. 

Considerable  experimental  work  of  an  interesting  sort  was 
carried  out,  looking  toward  the  development  of  incendiary 
devices.  Three  types  of  flame  projectors,  flaming  bayonets,  an 
airplane  destroyer,  incendiary  darts,  and  the  smoke  knapsack 
were  among  the  projects  undertaken.  Owing  in  large  measure 
to  changes  in  requirements  by  the  American  Expeditionary 
Forces,  none  of  these  devices  was  actually  turned  out  on  any 
considerable  scale. 


Production  of  Pyrotechnics 

Articles 

Ordered 

Completed  to 
Nov.  8, 1 9 18 

Completed  to 
Feb.  /,  iQig 

Signal  rockets 
Position  lights 
Rifle  lights       . 
Signal  lights    . 
V.  B.  cartridges 
Very  cartridges, 
meter    . 

25-milli- 

615,000 

2,072,000 

55,000 

3,110,000 

1,215,000 

300,000 

500,000 

112,000 

50,083 

437.101 
1,187,532 

55,000 

2,661,008 

110,000 

31,000 

70,000 

2,100 

544.355 

1,670,070 

55.000 

2,710,268 

673,200 

188,102 

100,865 

8,000 

Smoke  torches 
Wing-tip  flares 
Airplane  flares 

CHAPTER  XV 
MISCELLANEOUS  ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT 

THE  miscellaneous  ordnance  equipment  of  the  Ameri- 
can soldier  in  the  recent  war, — that  is,  articles  which 
he  carried  with  him  and  which  added  to  his  comfort, 
his  safety,  or  his  efficiency  as  a  fighter, — though  in  many  re- 
spects identical  with  the  equipment  used  by  our  troops  for 
many  years,  contained  several  novelties. 

Among  these  were  helmets  and  armor.  There  is  a  widespread 
notion  that  helmets  and  body  armor  passed  away  with  the 
invention  of  gunpowder,  and  because  of  that  invention.  This 
notion  is  not  at  all  true.  Body  armor  came  to  its  highest 
development  long  after  gunpowder  was  in  common  use  in  war. 
The  sixteenth  century  witnessed  the  most  extensive  use  of 
armor.  At  that  time  guns  and  pistols  formed  an  important 
part  of  the  equipment  of  every  army,  and  even  a  weapon  which 
is  generally  fancied  to  be  ultramodern,  the  revolver,  had  been 
invented.  The  fact  is  that  not  gunpowder,  but  tactics,  caused 
the  decline  of  armor.  Not  that  armor  was  unable  to  stop  many 
types  of  projectiles  fired  from  guns,  but  that  its  weight  ham- 
pered swift  maneuvering,  caused  it  to  be  laid  aside  by  the 
soldier.  The  decline  of  armor  may  be  said  to  date  from  the 
Thirty  Years'  War.  The  armies  in  that  period,  and  particu- 
larly the  army  of  the  Swedes,  began  making  long  marches  for 
surprise  attacks,  and  the  body  armor  of  the  troops  was  found 
to  be  a  hindrance  in  such  tactics.  Thereafter  armor  went  out 
of  fashion. 

Yet  it  never  completely  disappeared  in  warfare.  General 
Rochambeau  is  said  to  have  worn  body  armor  at  the  siege  of 
Yorktown.  Great  numbers  of  corselets  and  headpieces  were 
worn  in  the  Napoleonic  wars.  The  corselet  which  John  Paul 
Jones  wore  in  his  fight  with  the  Serapis  is  preserved  at  the 


286  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  in  New  York.  The  Japanese 
Army  was  mailed  with  good  armor  as  late  as  1870.  Breast- 
plates were  worn  to  some  extent  in  the  Civil  War  in  the  United 
States,  and  an  armor  factory  was  actually  established  at  New 
Haven,  Connecticut,  about  1862.  In  the  museum  at  Richmond, 
Virginia,  is  an  equipment  of  armor  taken  from  a  dead  soldier 
in  one  of  the  trenches  at  the  siege  of  that  city.  There  was  a 
limited  use  of  armor  in  the  Franco-Prussian  War.  Some  of  the 
Japanese  troops  carried  shields  at  Port  Arthur.  Helmets  were 
worn  in  the  Boer  War.  A  notorious  Australian  bandit  in  the 
eighties  for  a  long  time  defied  armed  posses  to  capture  him, 
because  he  wore  armor  and  could  stand  off  entire  squads  of 
policemen  firing  at  him  with  Martini  rifles  at  close  range. 

It  can  not  be  said,  then,  that  armor,  in  coming  into  use  again 
in  the  Great  War,  was  resurrected;  it  was  merely  revived.  The 
war  against  Germany,  in  its  static  condition  during  most  of  the 
four-year  period,  was  one  in  which  armor  could  profitably  be 
used.  The  opportunity  could  scarcely  be  overlooked,  and 
indeed  it  was  not.  Everybody  knows  of  the  helmets  that  were 
in  general  use;  body  armor  itself  was  coming  into  favor  again, 
and  in  all  probability  only  the  welcome,  but  unexpected,  end 
of  hostilities  prevented  it  from  becoming  once  more  an 
important  part  of  the  equipment  of  a  soldier. 

As  a  consequence  of  the  attenuated,  but  persistent,  use  of 
armor  by  soldiers  during  the  past  two  centuries  and  of  the 
demand  of  the  aristocratic  for  helmets  and  armor  as  ornaments, 
the  armorer's  trade  had  been  kept  alive  from  the  days  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus  to  the  present.  The  war  efforts  of  the 
United  States  in  1917  and  1918  demanded  a  wide  range  of 
human  talents  and  special  callings;  but  surely  the  utmost 
extension  of  the  bizarre  seemed  to  be  reached  when,  in  the 
early  days  of  our  undertaking,  the  Engineering  Division  of 
the  Ordnance  Department  sought  the  services  of  expert 
armorers.  Through  the  advice  of  the  National  Research  Coun- 
cil, which  had  established  a  committee  of  armor  experts,  the 
Ordnance  Department  commissioned  in  its  service  Major  Bash- 
ford  Dean,  a  lifelong  specialist  in  armor,  curator  in  the  Metro- 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  287 

politan  Museum  of  Art,  an  institution  which,  learning  of  the 
need,  at  once  placed  at  the  Government's  disposal  its  wonderful 
specimens  of  authentic  armor,  its  armor  repair  shop,  where 
models  could  at  once  be  made,  and  the  services  of  Major 
Dean's  assistant  there,  whom  he  had  brought  from  France — 
Daniel  Tachaux,  one  of  the  few  surviving  armorers  who  had 
inherited  lineally  his  technical  mastery  of  the  ancient  craft. 

There  were  but  two  nations  in  the  World  War  which  went  to 
the  Middle  Ages  for  ideas  of  protective  armor — ourselves  and 
Germany.  The  Germans,  who  applied  science  to  almost  every 
phase  of  warfare,  did  not  neglect  it  here.  Germany  early  con- 
sulted her  experts  on  ancient  armor  and  worked  out  their  sug- 
gestions. The  German  helmet  used  in  the  trenches  was  un- 
doubtedly superior  to  any  other  helmet  given  a  practical  use. 

The  first  helmets  to  be  used  in  the  Great  War  were  of  French 
manufacture.  They  were  designed  by  General  Adrien,  and 
2,000,000  of  them  were  manufactured  and  issued  to  the 
French  Army.  These  helmets  were  the  product  of  hasty  pioneer 
work,  but  the  fact  that  they  saved  from  2  to  5  per  cent 
of  the  normal  casualties  of  such  a  war  as  was  being  fought  at 
once  impelled  the  other  belligerents  to  adopt  the  idea.  Great 
Britain,  spurred  by  the  necessity  of  quickly  producing  a  hel- 
met in  quantity,  designed  the  helmet  most  simple  to  manufac- 
ture, one  which  could  be  pressed  out  of  cold  metal. 

When  America  entered  the  war  she  had,  naturally,  no  dis- 
tinctive helmet;  and  the  English  type,  being  easiest  to  make, 
was  adopted  to  fill  the  gap  until  we  could  design  a  more  effi- 
cient one  ourselves.  Four  hundred  thousand  British  helmets 
were  bought  in  England  and  issued  to  the  vanguard  of  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces.  Our  men  wore  them,  became 
accustomed  to  them,  and  came  to  feel  that  they  were  the  badge 
of  English-speaking  troops.  The  British  helmet  thus  became  a 
habit  with  our  men,  and  one  difficult  to  change — a  fact  which 
militated  against  the  popularity  of  the  more  advanced  and 
scientific  models  which  we  were  to  bring  out. 

Now,  the  British  helmet  possessed  some  notable  defects.  It 
did  not  afford  a  maximum  of  protective  area.  The  center  of 


288  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

gravity  was  not  so  placed  as  to  keep  the  helmet  from  wobbling. 
Its  lining  was  uncomfortable  and  disregarded  the  anatomy  of 
the  head.  It  was  vulnerable  at  the  concave  surface  where  bowl 
and  brim  joined.  It  is  not  an  astonishing  circumstance  that 
some  of  the  earlier  helmets  worn  by  the  men-at-arms  of  the 
days  of  knighthood  possessed  certain  of  these  same  defects — 
notably,  they  were  top-heavy  and  uncomfortable.  Only  by 
centuries  of  constant  application  and  improvement  were  the 
armorers  of  the  Middle  Ages  able  to  produce  helmets  which 
overcame  these  defects  and  which  embodied  all  the  prin- 
ciples of  defense  and  strength  which  science  could  put  into 
them.  The  best  medieval  helmets  stand  at  the  summit  of  the 
art.  It  was  the  constant  aim  of  the  modem  specialist,  aided 
by  the  facilities  of  the  twentieth-century  industries,  to  produce 
helmets  as  perfect  technically  as  those  rare  models  which  are 
the  pride  of  museums  and  collectors. 

Certainly  in  one  respect  we  had  the  advantage  of  the  an- 
cients: we  had  at  our  disposal  the  modem  alloy-steels  of 
great  resistance.  An  alloy  of  this  kind,  with  a  thickness  of 
.036  of  an  inch,  will  stop  a  jacketed  automatic  pistol  ball, 
.45  caliber,  traveling  at  the  rate  of  600  feet  a  second,  fired 
from  a  distance  of  ten  feet.  This  was  important,  not  only  be- 
cause it  facilitated  helmet  production,  but  because  it  led  to 
the  inference  that  body  armor  of  such  steel  might  still  be 
profitably  used.  The  records  of  the  hospitals  in  France  show 
that  seven  or  eight  of  every  ten  wounded  soldiers  were 
wounded  by  fragments  of  shell  and  other  missiles  which  even 
thin  armor  plate  would  have  kept  out.  The  German  troops  used 
body  armor  in  large  numbers,  each  set  weighing  from  nineteen 
to  twenty-four  pounds.  In  this  country  we  believed  it  possible 
to  produce  body  armor  which  would  not  be  diflScult  to  carry 
and  which  would  resist  the  impact  of  a  machine  gun  bullet  at 
fairly  close  range. 

The  production  of  helmets,  however,  was  our  first  concern; 
and  in  order  to  be  sure  of  a  sufficient  quantity  of  these  protec- 
tive headpieces,  we  adopted  the  British  model  for  production 
in  the  United  States  and  went  ahead  with  it  on  a  large  scale. 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  289 

For  the  metal,  we  adopted,  after  much  experimentation,  a 
steel  alloy  with  a  high  percentage  of  manganese.  This  was 
practically  the  same  as  the  steel  of  the  British  helmet.  Its 
chief  advantages  were  that  it  was  easy  to  work  in  the  metal 
presses  in  existence  and  that  it  required  no  further  tempering 
after  leaving  the  stamping  presses.  Its  hardness,  however,  wore 
away  the  stamping  tools  much  more  quickly  than  ordinary 
steel  sheets  would  have  done. 

We  adopted,  then,  the  British  helmet  design  and,  substan- 
tially, its  metal;  but  we  originated  our  own  lining.  This  was 
woven  of  cotton  twine  in  meshes  three-eighths  of  an  inch 
square.  This  web,  fitting  tightly  upon  the  wearer's  head, 
evenly  distributed  the  weight  of  the  two-pound  helmet,  and 
in  the  same  way  distributed  the  force  of  any  blow  upon  the 
helmet.  The  netting,  together  with  small  pieces  of  rubber 
around  the  edge  of  the  lining,  kept  the  helmet  away  from  the 
head,  so  that  even  a  rather  large  dent  could  not  reach  the 
wearer's  skull. 

It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  linings  for  the  American 
helmets  were  produced  by  concerns  whose  ordinary  business 
was  the  manufacture  of  shoes.  Ten  of  these  companies  took 
such  contracts.  Steel  for  the  helmets  was  rolled  by  the  Ameri- 
can Sheet  &  Tin  Plate  Company.  The  helmets  were  pressed 
and  stamped  into  shape  by  seven  companies  which  had  done 
similar  work  before  the  war.  These  were : 


Contractor  Delivered 

Edward  G.  Budd  Manufacturing  Company,  Philadelphia  .      .  1,150,755 

Sparks- Withington  Company,  Jackson,  Michigan       ....  473,469 

Crosby  Company,  Buffalo,  New  York 469,968 

Bossett  Corporation,  Utica,  New  York 116,735 

Columbian   Enameling   &   Stamping   Company,   Terre    Haute, 

Indiana 268,850 

Worcester  Pressed   Steel  Company,  Worcester,  Massachusetts  193,840 

Benjamin  Electric  Company,  Des  Plaines,  Illinois      ....  33,600 

Total 2,707,217 


290  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  metal  helmets  and  the  woven  linings  were  delivered  to 
the  plant  of  the  Ford  Motor  Company  at  Philadelphia,  where 
they  were  painted  and  assembled.  The  helmets  were  painted 
in  the  olive-drab  shade  for  protective  coloring.  Though  such 
objects  could  not  be  discerned  at  a  great  distance  on  dull  days, 
in  bright  weather  their  rounded  surfaces  might  catch  and  re- 
flect sunbeams  and  betray  the  positions  of  their  wearers.  To 
guard  against  this,  as  soon  as  the  helmets  were  treated  to  a 
first  coat  of  paint  fine  sawdust  was  blown  upon  the  wet  surface. 
When  this  had  dried,  another  coat  of  paint  was  applied;  and 
thus  a  nonreflecting,  gritty  surface  was  produced. 

We  began  to  receive  substantial  quantities  of  finished  hel- 
mets by  the  end  of  November  of  the  first  year  of  the  war.  On 
February  17,  1918,  practically  700,000  had  been  shipped 
abroad  or  were  ready  for  shipment  at  the  ports  of  embarkation. 
Later  in  the  spring  of  1918,  when  we  began  sending  men  to 
France  much  beyond  our  earlier  expectations,  the  orders  for 
helmets  were  greatly  expanded.  In  July  the  total  orders 
reached  3,000,000,  in  August  6,000,000,  and  in  September 
7,000,000.  This  would  give  us  enough  to  meet  all  require- 
ments until  June,  1919.  When  the  armistice  was  signed  the 
factories  were  producing  more  than  100,000  helmets  every  four 
days,  and  were  rapidly  approaching  the  time  when  their  daily 
output  would  be  60,000.  The  Government  canceled  all  helmet 
contracts  as  soon  as  the  fighting  ceased,  having  received  up  to 
that  time  a  total  of  2,700,000. 

While  this  manufacture  was  going  on  we  were  developing 
helmets  of  our  own.  Major  Dean  went  to  France  to  collect 
information  dealing  with  the  actual  needs  of  the  service  and  to 
present  numerous  experimental  models  of  helmets  for  the 
comment  and  criticism  of  the  General  Staff.  Several  of 
these  models  were  accepted  for  manufacture  here  in  experi- 
mental lots.  In  all,  we  developed  four  models  which  seemed  to 
have  merits  sufficient  to  recommend  their  adoption.  The  first 
distinctive  American  helmet  was  known  as  model  No.  2.  The 
Ford  Company  at  Detroit  pressed  about  1,200  of  these  hel- 
mets. The  helmet,  however,  was  similar  in  appearance  to  the 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  291 

German  helmet,  and  for  that  reason  was  disapproved  by  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces.  Helmet  Model  No.  3  was  of 
a  deep-bowl  type,  but  it  was  rejected  when  the  Hale  &  Kil- 
burn  Company,  of  Philadelphia,  after  a  great  deal  of  experi- 
mentation, found  that  it  was  too  deep  for  successful  manu- 
facture by  pressing.  Model  No.  4  was  designed  by  the  master 
armorer  of  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art.  It  was  also  found 
too  difficult  to  manufacture. 

Helmet  No.  5  was  strongly  recommended  by  American  ex- 
perts, but  was  not  accepted  by  the  General  Staff.  It  was  de- 
signed by  the  armor  committee  at  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
of  Art,  in  conjunction  with  the  Engineering  Division  of  the 
Ordnance  Department.  Hale  &  Kilburn  undertook  to  manu- 
facture these  helmets,  which  were  to  be  painted,  assembled, 
and  packed  by  the  Ford  Motor  Company  at  its  Philadelphia 
plant.  Various  component  parts  of  the  helmet  were  sublet  in 
experimental  quantities  to  numerous  manufacturers.  The  No. 
5  helmet,  complete,  weighed  two  pounds,  six  and  one-half 
ounces.  It  combined  the  virtues  of  several  types  of  helmets.  It 
gave  a  maximum  of  protection  for  its  weight.  It  was  compara- 
tively easy  to  produce.  This  helmet,  with  slight  variations, 
was  later  adopted  as  the  standard  helmet  of  the  Swiss  Army. 
The  latest  German  helmet,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  approxi- 
mated its  lines. 

We  also  produced  helmets  for  special  services — one  with  a 
visor  to  protect  machine  gunners  and  snipers,  and  another, 
known  as  Model  14,  for  aviators,  it  being  little  heavier  than 
the  leather  helmet  which  airmen  wore  in  the  war  and  twenty 
times  as  strong  a  defense  for  the  head.  A  third  special  helmet, 
known  as  Model  15,  was  for  operators  of  tanks.  It  was  pro- 
vided with  a  neck  guard  of  padded  silk  to  stop  lead  splash 
which  might  penetrate  the  turret  of  the  tank.  The  Ordnance 
Department  turned  out  twenty-iive  of  these  in  ten  days  and 
sent  them  by  courier  to  France  for  a  test. 

The  Germans  issued  body  armor  only  to  troops  holding  ex- 
posed positions  under  heavy  machine  gun  and  rifle  fire;  but 
even  such  use  was  distinctly  valuable,  as  was  shown  by  cap- 


292  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

tured  German  reports.  The  Engineering  Division  of  the  Ord- 
nance Department  developed  a  body  defense  which  included  a 
light  front  and  a  body  plate,  these  together  weighing  nine  and 
one-half  pounds.  One  lot  of  5,000  sets  was  manufactured  by 
the  Hale  &  Kilburn  Company.  The  linings  of  these  plates 
were  of  sponge  rubber,  and  they  were  made  by  the  Miller 
Rubber  Company  of  Akron,  Ohio.  All  these  sets  were  shipped 
abroad  for  testing;  but  the  report  was  not  favorable,  for  the 
American  soldier  did  not  wish  to  be  hampered  with  armor.  He 
had  learned  to  wear  his  helmet,  but  he  had  yet  to  be  convinced 
of  the  practical  value  of  body  armor.  We  developed  a  heavy 
breastplate  with  thigh  guards,  weighing  twenty-seven  pounds, 
which  stopped  machine  gun  bullets  at  150  yards.  An  experi- 
mental lot  of  these  was  completed  in  twenty-six  days  by  the 
MuUins  Manufacturing  Company  of  Salem,  Ohio.  These  were 
also  shipped  abroad  for  test.  A  few  defenses  for  arms  and  legs 
were  prepared  which,  although  light  in  weight,  would  protect 
the  wearer  from  an  automatic-pistol  ball  at  ten  feet.  About 
70  per  cent  of  the  hospital  cases  in  France  were  casualties 
caused  by  wounds  in  the  arms  and  legs.  These  defenses,  how- 
ever, were  rejected  because  they  somewhat  impeded  the  move- 
ments of  the  wearer. 

Our  development  in  armor  also  produced  an  aviator's  chair 
weighing  sixty  pounds.  Withstanding  armor-piercing  bullets 
fired  at  a  distance  of  fifty  yards,  it  would  protect  the  pilot 
against  injury  from  below  and  from  the  back.  Since  the  pierc- 
ing of  the  gas  mask  canister  by  a  bullet  might  result  in  the 
death  of  the  soldier  by  admitting  gas  directly  into  the  breath- 
ing system  of  his  mask,  the  Ordnance  Department  also  de- 
signed an  armored  haversack  for  the  gas  mask  and  its  canister, 
this  haversack  incidentall}^  serving  as  a  breast  defense. 

BAYONETS  AND  TRENCH  KNIVES 

Another  large  ordnance  operation  was  the  production  of 
bayonets  for  the  service  rifles.  The  British  bayonet  had  proved 
to  be  highly  satisfactory  in  the  war;  and,  since  it  was  already 
designed  to  fit  the  Enfield  rifle,  which  we  had  adopted  for  our 


Photo  from  Landers,  Frary  i3  Clark 

MANUFACTURING  BAYONETS 


Photo  by  Siynal  Cltj.' 


MAKING  TRENCH  KNIVES 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  293 

own,  we  took  the  British  bayonet  as  it  was  and,  with  one 
slight  alteration,  set  out  to  produce  it  in  this  country. 

The  Government  found  both  the  Remington  Arms-Union 
Metallic  Cartridge  Company  at  its  Bridgeport,  Connecticut, 
works,  and  the  Winchester  Repeating  Arms  Company  building 
these  bayonets  for  the  English  Government.  By  1917  Great 
Britain's  demands  were  being  well  supplied  by  home  manu- 
facture, and  we  were  able  to  buy  approximately  545,500 
bayonets  which  had  already  been  manufactured  for  the  British. 
The  Ordnance  Department  at  once  started  these  two  concerns 
on  contracts  for  bayonets  for  the  American  Government, 
Remington  with  total  orders  for  2,820,803  bayonets  and 
Winchester  with  orders  for  672,500.  Remington  delivered,  in 
all,  1,565,644  bayonets  and  Winchester  395,894 — a  total  of 
1,961,538. 

The  total  production  of  1917  rifles  was  about  2,520,000. 
These  figures  indicate  that  we  were  short  over  500,000  bayo- 
nets at  the  time  hostilities  ceased ;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  this 
shortage  had  already  become  acute,  especially  in  the  training 
camps.  The  bayonets  had  not  come  so  rapidly  as  we  had  ex- 
pected, because  to  produce  them  at  the  rate  originally  planned 
would  have  interfered  with  the  more  essential  production  of 
rifles  by  these  same  companies.  Accordingly,  in  1918  addi- 
tional contracts  for  bayonets  were  made.  Landers,  Frary  & 
Clark,  of  New  Britain,  Connecticut,  engaged  to  manufacture 
500,000  bayonets,  and  the  National  Motor  Vehicle  Company 
255,000.  These  latter  contracts  were  suspended  after  the  armi- 
stice was  signed.  The  additional  orders  had  made  it  certain 
that  there  would  be  no  bayonet  shortage  by  the  spring  of  1919. 

While  this  production  was  under  way  we  were  also  manu- 
facturing bayonets  for  the  model  1903  Springfield  rifle.  The 
Springfield  Armory  produced  347,533  of  these  and  the  Rock 
Island  Arsenal  36,800.  In  addition  the  Springfield  Armory 
delivered  50,000  bayonet  blades  as  spare  parts. 

We  had  to  provide  not  only  bayonets,  but  also  their  scab- 
bards. The  scabbard  of  the  1917  bayonet  was  of  simple  manu- 
facture, and  there  were  no  difficulties  in  securing  sufficient 


294  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

quantities.  The  Jewell  Belt  Company  delivered  1,810,675  of 
them;  Graton  &  Knight  delivered  1,669,581;  and  the  Rock 
Island  Arsenal  produced  3,000.  This  gave  us  a  total  of  ap- 
proximately 3,480,000  scabbards,  a  quantity  greatly  in  excess 
of  the  production  of  either  bayonets  or  rifles. 

A  new  weapon  which  had  come  into  use  during  the  Great 
War,  as  part  of  the  soldier's  individual  equipment,  was  the 
trench  knife.  The  question  of  making  such  knives  was  taken 
up  by  the  Government  with  various  manufacturers  throughout 
the  country.  They  were  given  a  general  idea  of  what  was  re- 
quired and,  in  conjunction  with  the  Ordnance  Department, 
were  requested  to  develop  details.  The  design  submitted  by 
Henry  Disston  &  Sons,  of  Philadelphia,  received  the  most 
favorable  consideration.  This  knife  was  manufactured  and 
known  as  model  1917.  It  was  a  triangular  blade  nine  inches 
long.  The  triangular  blade  was  deemed  the  most  efficient  be- 
cause of  the  ease  with  which  it  would  pierce  clothing  and  even 
leather.  This  knife,  slightly  changed  in  the  handle  and  given 
a  different  guard  to  protect  the  user's  knuckles,  was  known  as 
model  1918.  These  knives  were  sent  abroad  in  large  quantities 
to  be  used  by  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  Landers, 
Frary  &  Clark  produced  1 13,000  and  the  Oneida  Community 
(Ltd.),  Oneida,  New  York,  10,000. 

On  June  1,  1918,  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  made 
an  exhaustive  test  in  comparison  of  the  various  trench  knives 
used  abroad.  The  four  knives  tested  were:  United  States, 
model  1917;  Hughes;  French;  and  British  knuckle  knife. 
These  tests  were  made  to  determine  the  merits  of  the  dif- 
ferent knives  in  the  following  points:  (a)  serviceableness,  or 
adaptability  to  use  in  conjunction  with  other  weapons;  (b) 
quickness  in  action;  (c)  likelihood  of  its  dropping  from  the 
hand  of  a  soldier  knocked  unconscious;  (d)  fitness  for  being 
carried  in  the  hand  while  crawling;  (e)  possibility  of  its  being 
knocked  out  of  the  hand;  (f)  weight,  length,  and  shape  of 
blade;  and  (g)  shape  of  handle.  It  was  found  that  the  model 
1917,  although  a  satisfactory  knife,  could  be  improved. 
Therefore  the  trench  knife  known  as  Mark  I  was  developed. 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  295 

partly  by  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  and  partly  by 
the  Ordnance  Engineering  Division.  This  knife  was  entirely 
different  from  the  model  1917,  having  a  flat  blade,  a  metal 
scabbard,  and  a  cast-bronze  handle.  It  was  a  combination  of 
all  the  good  points  of  all  the  knives  used  by  the  foreign  armies. 
The  Government  placed  orders  for  1,232,780  of  the  new 
knives.  Deliveries  were  to  have  begun  in  December,  but  before 
that  time  peace  had  come  and  the  orders  had  been  reduced  to 
119,424.  The  new  model  knives  were  to  have  been  manufac- 
tured by  A.  A.  Simons  &  Son,  Dayton,  Ohio;  Henry  Disston 
&  Sons,  Philadelphia;  Landers,  Frary  &  Clark,  and  the  Oneida 
Community  (Ltd.).  All  contracts  were  canceled  except  the  one 
with  Landers,  Frary  &  Clark. 

PERISCOPES,  BELTS,  ETC. 

Another  new  article  in  the  equipment  of  our  soldiers  was  the 
trench  periscope,  a  device  which  enabled  a  man  to  look  over 
the  edge  of  the  trench  without  exposing  himself  to  fire.  The 
ordinary  periscope  was  merely  a  wooden  box  two  inches 
square  and  fifteen  inches  long,  with  an  inclined  mirror  set  at 
each  end.  Production  was  begun  in  October,  1917,  by  two  com- 
panies, and  81,000  were  delivered  by  the  middle  of  January. 
In  August,  1918,  an  additional  lot  of  60,000  was  ordered, 
but  the  deliveries  were  slow. 

An  even  simpler  periscope  was  merely  a  mirror,  about  three 
inches  long  and  an  inch  and  a  half  wide,  which  could  be  placed 
on  a  bayonet  or  a  stick  and  set  up  over  the  trench  so  that  it  gave 
a  view  of  the  ground  in  front.  A  total  of  100,000  of  these  was 
delivered  before  the  end  of  July,  1918,  and  50,000  additional 
ones  before  November.* 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war  all  textile  equipment,  such  as 
cartridge  belts,  bandoleers  to  carry  ammunition,  haversacks, 
pack  carriers,  pistol  holsters,  canteen  covers,  and  similar  mate- 
rial, were  supplied  in  woven  material.  Only  two  concerns  in 
this  country  could  manufacture  articles  of  this  quality.  They 

*  Further  facts  about  periscopes  are  included  in  the  chapter  entitled  Sights 
and  Fire-Control  Apparatus. 


296  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

were  the  Mills  Woven  Cartridge  Belt  Company,  Worcester, 
Massachusetts,  and  the  Russell  Manufacturing  Company, 
Middletown,  Connecticut.  Although  these  two  concerns  prac- 
tically doubled  their  output  and  worked  day  and  night  to  sup- 
ply the  material,  the  demand  was  too  great,  and  belts  and 
carriers  were  designed  to  be  stitched  and  sewn  instead  of 
woven.  Equipment  made  in  this  manner  is  inferior  to  the 
woven.  The  Mills  Woven  Cartridge  Belt  Company  produced 
approximately  3,200,000  of  the  woven  articles  and  the  Russell 
Manufacturing  Company  1,500,000.  Large  producers  of  the 
stitched  and  sewn  material  were  the  Plant  Brothers  Company, 
Boston,  Massachusetts;  R.  H.  Long  Company,  Framingham, 
Massachusetts ;  and  L.  C.  Chase  Company,  Watertown,  Massa- 
chusetts. 

For  the  Browning  automatic  rifle  and  the  Browning  machine 
gun  there  were  specially  designed  belts  and  bandoleers.  The 
rifleman  had  his  own  special  belt,  his  first  and  second  assistants 
had  their  own  individual  belts,  and  the  assistants  also  had  two 
bandoleers  each,  one  right  and  one  left,  which  were  carried 
across  their  shoulders.  These  were  manufactured  in  quantities 
by  the  following  manufacturers: 


R.  H.  Long  Company,  Framingham,  Massachusetts    ....      175,000 

Plant  Brothers  Company,  Boston,  Massachusetts 75,000 

L.  C.  Chase  Company,  Watertown,  Massachusetts 20,000 


Many  small  articles  of  textile  equipment  were  produced  in 
immense  quantities.  Approximately  four  and  a  half  million 
canteen  covers  were  produced  before  November  i,  1918.  Large 
contracts  were  placed  with  the  following  concerns:  Perkins- 
Campbell  Company,  Cincinnati,  Ohio;  Brauer  Brothers,  St. 
Louis,  Missouri;  L.  C.  Chase  Company,  Watertown,  Massa- 
chusetts; Miller-Hexter  Company,  Cleveland,  Ohio;  Powers 
Manufacturing  Company,  Waterloo,  Iowa ;  R.  H.  Long  Com- 
pany, Framingham,  Massachusetts;  Bradford  Company,  St. 
Joseph,  Michigan;  Galvin  Brothers,  Cleveland,  Ohio;  and 
Progressive  Knitting  Works,  Brooklyn,  New  York. 


ORDNANCE  EQUIPMENT  297 

Approximately  four  and  a  half  million  haversacks  were  pro- 
duced and  delivered,  also  before  November  l,  1918.  Large 
manufacturers  producing  these  were  as  follows :  Canvas  Prod- 
ucts Compan}^  St.  Louis,  Missouri ;  Rock  Island  Arsenal,  Rock 
Island,  Illinois;  Plant  Brothers  Company,  Boston,  Massachu- 
setts; Simmons  Hardware  Company,  St.  Louis,  Missouri; 
R.  H.  Long  Company,  Framingham,  Massachusetts;  Liberty, 
Durgin  (Inc.),  Haverhill,  Massachusetts;  and  Wiley,  Bick- 
ford  &  Sweet,  Hartford,  Connecticut. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  enumerate  the  entire  range  of  ord- 
nance munitions  produced,  outside  the  development  of  guns 
and  their  ammunition ;  but  the  manufacture  of  such  munitions, 
in  orders  that  ordinarily  amounted  to  millions  of  individual 
pieces,  engaged  the  activities  of  a  large  number  of  manufac- 
turers of  the  United  States. 

The  Government  ordered  about  1,200,000  axes  to  be  used 
in  trench  operations,  of  which  661,690  were  delivered.  Deliv- 
eries of  bags  of  all  sorts  for  horse  feed,  grain,  rations,  and  sup- 
plies totaled  about  2,250,000.  The  Government  received 
809,541  saddle  blankets;  about  3,750,000  carriers  for  en- 
trenching shovels,  axes,  and  picks;  nearly  4,450,000  covers 
for  the  breech  locks  of  rifles;  over  1,000,000  currycombs; 
76,230  lariats;  727,000  entrenching  picks;  nearly  4,750,000 
first-aid  pouches,  and  over  2,000,000  pouches  for  small  arti- 
cles; 234,689  cavalry"  saddles;  134,092  field  artillery  saddles; 
15,287  mule  saddles;  482,459  saddlebags;  nearly  1,800,000 
entrenching  shovels;  2,843,092  spur  straps;  and  70,556  steel 
measuring  tapes,  each  five  feet  long.  These  figures,  selected  at 
random  from  thousands  of  miscellaneous  items,  indicate  some- 
thing of  the  scale  on  which  America  went  to  war. 

The  old  model  1910  American  wire  cutter,  although  effi- 
cient in  times  past,  was  not  capable  of  cutting  the  specially 
constructed  manganese  wire  which  the  Germans  used.  It  was 
necessary  for  this  country  to  develop  a  better  cutter.  A  meet- 
ing of  the  plier  manufacturers  of  the  country  was  called,  and 
the  question  was  put  before  them.  The  spirit  of  cooperation 
of  the  American  manufacturers  was  evident,  for  over  90  per 


298  THE  ARiMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

cent  of  the  manufacturers  attended  the  meeting.  The  model 
submitted  by  Kraeuter  &  Company,  Newark,  New  Jersey,  was 
adopted,  and  5,000  were  manufactured  and  sent  to  France. 
Although  this  was  the  best  cutter  developed  hitherto,  it  was 
evident  that  it  was  not  the  ideal  article,  and  the  Engineering 
Division  of  Ordnance  continued  experimenting  to  make  a  more 
satisfactory  one.  In  this  connection  a  one-hand  wire  cutter  was 
developed  by  the  William  Schollhom  Company,  of  New 
Haven,  Connecticut.  This  cutter  was  an  efficient  and  satis- 
factory article,  and,  although  it  was  never  adopted  by  the 
American  Army  during  the  war,  it  is  worthy  of  mention. 
The  American  Expeditionary  Forces  eventually  sent  back 
drawings  and  samples  of  the  French  wire  cutter,  which  was 
developed  abroad  and  known  as  model  1918.  This  was  a  large 
two-hand  cutter.  Production  was  started.  The  article  was 
found  difficult  to  manufacture,  but  the  manufacturers  under- 
took it  with  a  will,  and  production  was  well  under  way  when 
the  armistice  was  signed. 

The  mess  equipment  of  the  soldier  included  the  following 
items :  meat  can,  condiment  can,  canteen  and  cup,  knife,  fork, 
and  spoon.  These  articles  were  practically  the  same  as  the 
Army  had  always  used,  with  one  exception — the  meat  can. 
Advice  was  received  from  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces 
that  the  meat  cans  in  which  the  soldiers'  food  was  placed  by 
the  cooks  of  the  various  organizations  were  not  large  enough 
to  hold  the  portions  that  the  American  doughboys  needed  when 
they  were  fighting  at  the  front.  Although  production  on  the 
old  model  was  well  under  way  with  various  American  manu- 
facturers, a  new  model  can  was  designed  which  was  half  an 
inch  deeper.  The  American  manufacturers  immediately,  with 
a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  themselves,  changed  their  dies  and 
tools  and  manufactured  the  new  and  larger  can,  of  which  thou- 
sands were  turned  out  daily. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
NAVY  ORDNANCE 

IT  would  be  unfortunate  if  the  reader  gained  from  the  pre- 
ceding chapters  an  impression  that  the  War  Department 
was  the  sole  producer  of  ordnance  supplies  during  the  war. 
The  United  States  Navy  had  its  ordnance  problems,  too;  and 
some  of  the  largest  industrial  operations  in  the  United  States 
during  1917  and  1918  were  prosecuted  in  behalf  of  the  Navy. 
The  navy  ordnance  enterprise,  to  be  sure,  could  not  compare  in 
size  with  that  of  the  Army,  and  it  required  no  such  elaborate 
preliminary  creation  of  special  facilities;  yet  that  it  was  a 
business  of  large  extent  is  certified  by  the  fact  that  the  total 
navy  commitments  'for  ordnance  of  various  sorts  during  the 
World  War  amounted  to  more  than  $800,000,000  in  value. 

As  a  general  rule  the  naval  ordnance  projects  reached  much 
more  advanced  stages  of  development  than  did  those  of  the 
War  Department.  Whether  because  of  the  superior  efficiency 
of  the  Navy's  single  purchasing  agency,  as  compared  with  the 
early  disastrous  army  plan  of  purchasing  through  the  various 
independent  procurement  bureaus,  or  because  the  Navy's  ord- 
nance industry  was  smaller  than  the  Army's  and  therefore 
easier  to  manage,  or  because  of  a  spirit  of  aggressiveness  char- 
acteristic of  the  Navy,  or  because  of  all  these  factors,  the  navy 
ordnance  officers  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  the  major  sorts 
of  supplies  which  they  labored  to  procure  produced  in  heavy 
quantities  and  actually  employed — employed  effectively, 
moreover — in  combat  operations  against  the  enemy.  One  of 
these  supplies,  based  on  an  invention  developed  by  the  Navy's 
Bureau  of  Ordnance  during  the  war,  had  perhaps  as  much  to  do 
with  compelling  the  early  capitulation  of  Germany  as  any 
other  material  thing  that  could  be  named. 

The  first  great  responsibility  which  fell  upon  the  Navy's 


300  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Bureau  of  Ordnance  was  to  arm  the  merchant  ships  sailing 
under  the  American  flag.  To  Germany's  proclamation  of  un- 
restricted submarine  warfare,  the  reply  of  the  United  States 
was  the  order  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy  of  March  13,  1917, 
requiring  the  arming  of  all  American  merchant  ships  voyaging 
into  the  danger  zones  and  designating  crews  of  navy  marks- 
men to  man  the  guns  on  these  ships.  These  gun  crews  were 
called  Armed  Guards,  a  designation  that  continued  in  use  until 
the  armistice.  The  exploits  and  adventures  of  the  Armed 
Guards,  placed  as  they  finally  were  on  more  than  500  Ameri- 
can cargo  and  passenger  vessels,  form  one  of  the  heroic  chap- 
ters in  the  history  of  American  participation  in  the  World 
War.  The  arming  of  vessels  was  one  of  the  important  meas- 
ures in  the  combination  of  offensive  and  defensive  operations 
which  effectively  checked  the  successes  of  the  enemy's  sub- 
mersibles. 

The  conditions  of  naval  warfare  in  1917  and  1918  laid  the 
emphasis  upon  the  production  of  guns  of  the  smaller  sizes.  For 
years  prior  to  the  declaration  of  war  the  tendency  had  been 
all  the  other  way:  battleships  were  made  larger  and  heavier, 
with  main  batteries  of  larger  and  larger  guns.  The  14-inch  gun 
had  become  standard  for  the  turrets  of  our  capital  ships,  and 
the  designers  were  forecasting  the  day  when  15-inch  and  16- 
inch  rifles  would  be  mounted  in  the  main  batteries  of  capital 
ships.  The  effect  of  the  declaration  of  war  was  to  suspend  all 
construction  in  our  ambitious  capital-ship  program  in  order 
that  the  shipbuilding  facilities  at  the  disposal  of  the  Navy 
might  concentrate  upon  the  construction  of  destroyers,  sub- 
marines, submarine  chasers,  patrol  boats,  mine  sweepers,  and 
all  other  small  craft  especially  adapted  for  use  in  the  sub- 
marine war.  Even  without  further  construction  of  capital  ships 
the  Grand  Fleet  of  the  Allies  held  the  safe  preponderance  of 
floating  power,  and  the  enemy  would  not  come  out  from  his 
fleet  bases  and  give  battle  on  the  surface.  Therefore  there  was 
no  need  of  any  more  battleships  and  cruisers  than  we  already 
possessed.  But  at  no  time  did  America  and  the  Allies  have  as 
many  anti-submarine  vessels  as  they  could  have  used.  The  re- 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  301 

suit  was  a  feverish  construction  of  such  vessels  in  the  navy- 
yards  of  the  United  States,  an  effort  which  produced  records 
of  construction  never  equaled  either  by  ourselves  in  the  past 
or  by  any  of  the  Allies  contemporaneously. 

A  corollary  of  this  policy  in  the  Navy  Department's  Bureau 
of  Ordnance  was  the  partial  withdrawal  of  attention  from  the 
production  of  guns  of  the  larger  calibers  and  increased  atten- 
tion to  weapons  adapted  to  use  against  the  thin-skinned  sub- 
marines— guns  which  small  patrol  craft  could  carry  easily  and 
guns  the  firing  loads  of  which  could  be  supported  by  the  rela- 
tively frail  construction  of  the  decks  of  merchant  ships.  These 
two  considerations  produced  a  sharp  limitation  of  the  sizes  of 
guns.  The  6-inch  gun,  50  calibers,  was  the  maximum  size 
used,  but  the  3-,  4-,  and  5-inch  guns  were  far  commoner.  The 
disadvantage  in  the  3-inch  and  4-inch  guns  was  the  fact  that 
the  later  German  submarines  carried  6-inch  guns  which  could 
outrange  them.  One  hundred  and  sixty-nine  6-inch  guns  were 
mounted  on  the  decks  of  American  transports  and  merchant 
vessels;  guns  of  the  3-inch  and  4-inch  sizes  numbered  652.  In 
all,  including  destroyers,  Eagle  boats,  sub-chasers,  and  other 
war  craft  used  in  the  danger  zones,  as  well  as  transports  and 
merchant  ships,  the  Navy  armed  1,868  vessels  during  the  war, 
using  2,501  cannon  for  the  purpose,  in  addition  to  2,850 
machine  guns  and  1-,  3-,  and  6-pounders.  One  3-inch  Davis 
non-recoil  gun,  the  principal  use  of  which  was  on  aircraft,  was 
mounted  on  a  submarine  patrol  boat. 

The  business  of  procuring  this  great  number  of  weapons  was 
one  of  the  chief  tasks  for  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  during  the 
war.  The  enterprise  was  started  well  in  advance  of  the  actual 
declaration  of  war.  In  the  two  months  between  the  time  we 
recalled  our  ambassador  from  Berlin  (February  3,  1917)  and 
the  time  we  declared  war  against  Germany  (April  6,  1917), 
the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  placed  contracts  for  the  construction 
of  2,500  guns  of  small  caliber,  of  which  1,300  were  of  the  3- 
inch,  4-inch,  and  6-inch  sizes.  This  expedition  in  the  Bureau 
of  Ordnance  resulted  in  a  heavy  production  of  guns  in  1918, 
at  the  time  when  merchant  vessels  were  coming  under  the 


302  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

American  flag  in  greatest  number  and  when  the  shipyards  had 
reached  quantity  production  in  their  output  of  war  craft  for 
the  submarine  zone.  Though  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  now  and 
then  had  to  turn  some  sharp  corners,  it  always  had  the  guns 
ready  when  the  ships  were  ready  for  the  guns. 

In  these  ante-bellum  weeks,  too,  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance 
was  busy  in  other  directions.  In  advance  of  the  declaration  of 
war,  it  placed  orders  for  the  ammunition  for  the  guns  put  in 
procurement,  and  also  ordered  such  things  as  machine  guns, 
rifles  and  pistols,  mines,  aircraft  bombs,  and  submarine  nets. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  among  these  early  orders  was  a  contract 
calling  for  the  manufacture  of  3,850  projectiles  for  14-inch 
guns.  Later  on,  the  Navy,  as  was  noted  in  Chapter  V,  provided 
railroad  mounts  for  a  number  of  the  14-inch  battleship  guns 
which  it  had  in  reserve,  and  sent  several  batteries  of  this  mate- 
riel to  France,  where  they  gave  effective  service  during  the 
final  drive  which  ended  in  Germany's  defeat.  The  projectiles 
used  by  these  batteries,  782  of  them  in  all,  were  part  of  those 
ordered  before  the  declaration  of  war.  The  advantages  of  an 
early  start  in  the  production  of  munitions  of  war  were,  then, 
clear.  The  Army,  delaying  for  several  months  after  the  declara- 
tion of  war  the  proper  inauguration  of  the  manufacturing 
end  of  its  ammunition  program,  was  unable  to  place  in  France 
any  appreciable  quantities  of  artillery  ammunition  in  time  for 
it  to  be  fired  against  the  enemy. 

If  the  Navy  had  depended  upon  new  production  to  supply 
the  guns  needed  during  the  war,  many  of  the  vessels  which 
were  actually  armed  would  have  had  to  go  without  guns. 
Even  under  the  most  favorable  circumstances  it  takes  a  long 
time  to  build  a  gun;  and  the  Navy,  like  the  Army,  had  to  rely, 
in  large  part,  for  the  supply  of  weapons  on  its  war  contracts, 
upon  new  gun  plants,  built  and  equipped  after  the  war  emer- 
gency began.  The  Navy  went  into  the  war  with  only  376  guns 
of  suitable  sizes  in  reserve.  The  demands  upon  the  Bureau  of 
Ordnance  for  guns  of  the  3-inch,  4-inch,  5-inch,  and  6-inch 
sizes  amounted  in  all  to  more  than  2,700  such  weapons.  The 
total  production  of  these  sizes  during  the  war  amounted  to 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  303 

about  2,000  guns,  but  this  production  occurred  almost  entirely 
in  the  year  1918,  and  the  heaviest  part  of  it  in  the  three  months 
before  the  armistice.  After  exhausting  its  own  reserve  supply  of 
guns  in  the  arming  of  ships,  the  Bureau,  in  order  to  bridge  the 
gap  until  the  new  production  could  start,  went  to  the  fleet  and 
stripped  the  battleships  and  cruisers  of  their  secondary  bat- 
teries, obtaining  from  this  source  a  total  of  490  guns. 

Another  consequence  of  the  conditions  of  warfare  at  sea 
was  that  this  withdrawal  of  light  guns  could  be  carried  out 
without  weakening  the  fleet.  On  the  contrary,  it  strengthened 
it.  The  secondary  batteries  of  which  these  guns  were  part, 
nearly  always  located  between  decks  in  the  battleships  and 
cruisers,  were  fired  through  ports  in  the  vessels'  sides.  Such 
cruisers  and  other  large  war  vessels  as  were  to  be  used  in  the 
danger  zones  had  only  the  submarine  to  fear.  Immediately  after 
the  explosion  of  a  torpedo  the  stricken  ship  almost  invariably 
listed  heavily  to  one  side  or  the  other.  This  list  was  of  only 
brief  duration,  and  after  it  the  vessel  would  right  itself  and 
might  then  be  salvaged  if  its  water-tight  bulkheads  held.  If, 
however,  there  were  open  ports  in  the  vessel's  sides,  a  fatal 
amount  of  water  might  be  taken  in  through  these  openings  in 
the  first  list  after  the  torpedo  struck.  Consequently  the  prac- 
tice was  to  prepare  capital  war  vessels  for  war-zone  service  by 
removing  the  between-decks  guns  and  sealing  the  ports.  This 
practice  made  available  a  considerable  number  of  guns  which 
could  be  used  for  arming  merchant  vessels. 

The  Bureau  of  Ordnance  first  went  to  the  fleet  for  guns  on 
March  27,  more  than  a  week  before  the  declaration  of  war. 
At  that  time  it  took  thirty-eight  3-inch,  50-caliber  guns  from 
the  big  ships.  On  April  26  the  Bureau  received  authority  to 
take  184  more,  ranging  in  size  from  3-inch,  50-caliber  guns 
to  6-inch,  50-caliber  guns.  Two  days  later  the  Bureau  obtained 
180  additional  3-inch  50's.  The  cruiser  Memphis  stranded  on 
the  coast  of  San  Domingo,  and  her  light  guns  were  salvaged 
and  used  for  arming  merchant  ships.  The  Milwaukee  went  on 
the  shore  in  California,  and  all  of  her  3-inch  and  6-inch  guns 
became  available  for  merchant  ships.  During  the  summer  and 


304  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

early  fall  of  1917  the  Naval  Gun  Factory  in  Washington 
began  delivering  a  few  new  guns  suitable  for  this  purpose — 
these  on  orders  placed  with  the  factory  considerably  in  advance 
of  the  declaration  of  war.  On  October  1,  1917,  the  arming  of 
merchant  ships  and  anti-submarine  craft  had  exhausted  the 
guns  at  the  disposal  of  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance.  The  ships 
were  coming  in  to  be  armed  in  ever-increasing  numbers.  On  the 
4th  day  of  that  month  the  Bureau  again  went  to  the  fleet  and 
took  from  it  fifty-six  more  guns,  although  now  the  fleet  could 
not  well  spare  them.  Again  on  December  7  the  Bureau  once 
more  raided  the  battleships  and  cruisers  and  took  seventy  guns, 
mostly  of  the  5-inch  and  6-inch  sizes.  But  this  requisition 
absolutely  exhausted  that  source.  The  fleet  could  give  up  no 
more  without  impairing  its  own  fighting  efficiency. 

Fortunately,  the  first  of  the  Navy's  war  contracts  for  guns 
were  then  about  to  bring  forth  results.  Because  of  the  severe 
weather  conditions  in  the  early  weeks  of  1918  and  the  simul- 
taneous congestion  of  shipping  (which  was  not  to  be  relieved 
until  the  Shipping  Control  Committee  took  hold  in  February), 
only  a  few  merchant  ships  presented  themselves  in  that  inter- 
val to  be  armed.  In  January  the  Linderman  Steel  &  JVIachinery 
Company,  of  Muskegon,  Michigan,  delivered  the  first  naval 
gun  mount  produced  in  the  United  States  under  a  war  contract. 
It  was  a  mount  for  a  4-inch  gun.  The  first  gun  delivered  under 
a  war  contract  came  from  the  new  gun  plant  of  the  Root  & 
Van  Dervoort  Engineering  Company  of  East  Moline,  Illinois, 
on  April  3,  1918 — a  4-inch  gun.  Other  war  contracts  were  then 
at  the  point  of  reaching  production.  As  spring  advanced  the 
Bureau  began  receiving  an  ever-increasing  supply  of  new  guns 
and  mounts;  but  at  this  time  also  the  Shipping  Board  was 
most  active  in  building  up  the  merchant  marine  by  chartering 
and  seizing  vessels  and  also  by  new  construction.  The  result 
was  that,  though  the  Bureau  stimulated  and  speeded  up  pro- 
duction by  every  method  at  its  command,  at  the  navy  yards 
on  the  Atlantic  coast  there  never  were  at  any  time  more  than  a 
dozen  guns  on  hand  without  places  to  put  them.  Not  until  the 
fall  of  1918  did  ordnance  construction  gain  on  the  demand  for 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  305 

guns,  and  then  most  of  the  principal  contractors  had  reached 
the  stage  of  quantity  production.  On  the  day  of  the  armistice 
the  Bureau  found  itself  with  a  reserve  of  fifty  guns,  although 
tonnage  was  then  coming  under  the  flag  at  a  rate  never  equaled 
before  or  afterwards. 

The  Navy's  Bureau  of  Construction  and  Repair  installed 
the  guns  on  the  merchant  ships  as  well  as  on  the  new  war 
craft  which  needed  weapons  of  these  sizes.  The  installation  of  a 
gun  on  a  merchant  vessel  was  no  simple  job.  The  deck  had  to 
be  strongly  reinforced  and  all  foundations  made  secure  enough 
to  stand  the  shocks  of  firing.  The  arming  meant  more  to  a  ship 
than  a  gun  platform  and  a  strengthened  deck.  It  meant  ammu- 
nition compartments  in  the  hold,  ammunition  chests  on  deck, 
ammunition-passing  scuttles,  and  speaking  tubes  and  other 
communication  devices.  All  of  this  work  of  installation  was 
done  by  gangs  from  the  Atlantic  coast  navy  yards,  and  prin- 
cipally from  the  New  York  Navy  Yard,  although  a  few  ships 
were  armed  at  Philadelphia  and  Norfolk.  The  guns  were 
installed  while  the  vessels  were  loading  or  unloading. 

The  merchant  marine  grew  to  a  tonnage  which  far  surpassed 
the  Navy's  expectations,  and  its  size  necessitated  a  change  in 
the  practice  of  arming  merchant  vessels.  At  first  the  Navy 
placed  from  three  to  six  guns  on  a  single  ship,  but  such  heavy 
armament  was  soon  found  to  be  impracticable.  It  was  impos- 
sible to  supply  either  guns  or  gun  crews  in  such  numbers. 
Moreover,  it  was  hard  to  find  good  locations  for  so  many  guns 
on  a  single  ship,  and  a  multiplicity  of  guns  on  deck  interfered 
unduly  with  cargo  handling.  For  these  reasons  the  Navy 
adopted  the  standard  practice  of  two  guns  to  a  ship — a  3-inch, 
50-caliber  gun  forward,  and  a  heavier  gun  at  the  stern.  This 
was  found  to  be  an  effective  armament. 

Incidentally,  during  this  period  of  war  construction  the 
Navy  manufactured  an  entirely  new  gun  especially  adapted  to 
use  against  submarines  and  aircraft.  This  was  a  3-inch  gun 
only  23  calibers  in  length,  or  five  feet,  nine  inches.  The  gun  was 
designed  especially  for  a  war  vessel  new  to  our  Navy,  the 
110-foot  submarine  chaser.  This  useful  fighting  boat,  though 


3o6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

stanch  and  seaworthy,  was  not  large  enough  to  mount  a  heavy- 
gun  of  any  of  the  usual  calibers.  Yet  the  chaser  needed  a  gun 
that  would  throw  a  shell  of  sufficient  size  to  be  effective 
against  a  submarine.  The  3-inch,  23-caliber  gun  was  the  answer 
to  this  problem.  It  threw  a  3-inch  shell,  but  thanks  to  its 
short  barrel,  which  reduced  its  power  (though  not  below  the 
point  of  destructiveness),  and  to  its  long  recoil,  it  did  not  put 
overheavy  firing  loads  on  the  decks  of  the  chasers.  This  gun 
was  designed  by  the  Poole  Engineering  &  Machine  Company 
of  Baltimore,  which  delivered  the  first  gun  within  seven 
months  after  the  date  of  its  contract.  This  concern  and  others 
produced  532  3-inch,  23-caliber  sub-chaser  guns  before  the 
armistice. 

The  famous  Davis  non-recoil  gun,  although  designed  for  use 
primarily  on  airplanes,  was  put  in  production  by  the  Bureau  of 
Ordnance  for  use  on  small  patrol  vessels.  These  Davis  boat 
guns  threw  a  3-inch  shell  with  sufficient  force  to  penetrate  the 
armor  plating  of  a  submarine.  The  Bureau  designed  and  started 
the  production  of  8-inch  howitzers,  ordering  100  of  them.  This 
howitzer  was  a  sort  of  glorified  trench  mortar,  designed  to 
throw  a  big  shell  holding  seventy  pounds  of  T.  N.  T.  about  a 
mile  and  a  half.  These,  with  the  3-inch,  23-caliber  gun  and 
the  now  familiar  Y-gun,  were  the  principal  ballistic  novelties 
produced  by  the  Navy  during  the  war. 

Like  the  Army,  the  Navy  was  forced  to  procure  most  of  its 
guns  of  large  caliber  on  war  contracts  placed  with  companies 
which  had  to  create  new  facilities  for  manufacture  and  to  train 
their  staffs  in  the  difficult  art  of  gunmaking.  Four  concerns — 
the  Tioga  Steel  &  Iron  Company,  the  Inland  Ordnance  Com- 
pany (a  subsidiary  of  the  McMyler  Interstate  Corporation), 
the  Alloy  Steel  Forging  Company,  and  the  Erie  Forge  &  Steel 
Company — took  the  navy  contracts  for  gun  forgings,  all  of 
them  building  new  plants  for  the  work  except  the  Inland  Ord- 
nance Company,  which  built  an  extension  to  its  existing  plant. 
Besides  the  Root  &  Van  Dervoort  Engineering  Company  and 
the  Poole  Engineering  &  Machine  Company,  the  concerns 
which  contracted  to  make  navy  guns  from  the  forgings  were: 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance.    V.  S.  N. 


THE  3-INCH  23-CALIBER  BOAT  GUN 


Photo  from  Mead-Mornson  ManufaLtunu^    Ccini'af. 


WAR  ORDNANCE  SHOP  CROWDED  WITH  NAVY  WORK 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance,  U.  S.  N. 

NAVAL  8-INCH  HOWITZER 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance.   U.  S.  N . 

DEPTH-CHARGE  LAUNCHING  GEAR 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  307 

the  American  Radiator  Company,  the  General  Ordnance  Com- 
pany, the  Four  Lakes  Ordnance  Company  (affiliated  with  the 
Steinle  Turret  Machine  Company  of  Madison,  Wisconsin), 
the  Defiance  Machine  Works,  the  Driggs  Ordnance  Company, 
the  Savage  Arms  Corporation,  and  the  Liberty  Ordnance  Com- 
pany, formerly  known  as  the  Bridgeport  Projectile  Company. 
All  but  four  of  these  concerns  built  new  plants  for  the  navy 
contracts.  Thus,  in  the  work  of  supplying  to  the  Navy  guns 
only,  without  mounts,  eight  great  new  ordnance  factories  were 
built  in  the  United  States,  and  five  other  large  factory  addi- 
tions constructed  and  equipped.  Most  of  these  concerns  reached 
quantity  production  before  the  armistice.  Two  in  which  the 
work  was  backward  were  commandeered  by  the  Government 
and  turned  over  for  operation  by  more  experienced  and  effi- 
cient concerns. 

Besides  the  guns  the  Navy  had  to  have  mounts  for  them.  To 
find  concerns  capable  of  manufacturing  such  materiel  with  the 
least  disturbance  to  existing  personnel  and  shop  equipment, 
the  Navy  turned  to  the  producers  of  such  heavy  metallic  struc- 
tures as  printing  presses,  coal-handling  machinery,  woodwork- 
ing machinery,  and  motor  cars.  The  successful  producers  of 
naval  gun  mounts  were  the  Linderman  Steel  &  Machinery- 
Company  of  Muskegon,  Michigan ;  the  Mead-Morrison  Manu- 
facturing Company,  Boston;  the  Ohmer  Fare  Register  Com- 
pany of  Dayton;  the  Miehle  Printing  Press  &  Manufacturing 
Company,  Chicago;  the  Goss  Printing  Press  Company,  Chi- 
cago; R.  Hoe  &  Company,  New  York;  the  Russel  Motor  Car 
Company,  Buffalo;  the  Poole  Engineering  &  Machine  Com- 
pany; and  the  American  Steel  Products  Company,  Brantford 
(Ontario)  plant. 

Because  of  the  inability  of  the  American  foundries  to  cast 
steel  in  a  way  that  could  pass  the  inspection  of  the  Navy  De- 
partment, the  mount  makers  experienced  considerable  diffi- 
culty in  obtaining  steel  castings.  The  Superior  Steel  Castings 
Company,  of  Benton  Harbor,  Michigan,  was  the  first  concern 
which  produced  satisfactory  mount  castings,  and  for  several 
months  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  had  to  allocate  the  output 


3o8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  this  plant  among  the  various  producers  of  mounts.  Sights 
were  another  stumblingblock.  The  Naval  Gun  Factory  at 
Washington  stepped  in  and  rebuilt  sights  which  could  not 
pass  the  acceptance  tests,  thus  permitting  the  early  use  of 
many  new  mounts  which  were  ready  for  service  except  for 
sights.  One  manufacturing  feat  should  be  noted — that  of  the 
Poole  Engineering  &  Machine  Company.  This  company  was 
concentrating  upon  the  production  of  the  3-inch,  23-caliber 
gun — both  tube  and  mount — which  was  its  own  design.  Find- 
ing it  impossible  to  secure  satisfactory  steel  castings  for  the 
mounts,  the  Poole  Company  experimented  with  bronze  and 
produced  a  satisfactory  mount  made  of  bronze,  a  metal  which 
the  foundrymen  were  able  to  cast.  The  result  was  that  the 
Bureau  authorized  the  substitution,  and  in  a  short  time  the 
company  began  turning  out  the  mounts.  This  quick  turn  en- 
abled half  a  hundred  new  submarine  chasers,  sorely  needed  in 
the  European  war  zone,  but  held  up  for  suitable  guns,  to  pro- 
ceed across  the  ocean  almost  immediately. 

The  mount  makers  began  delivering  mounts  early  in  1918 
and,  by  the  date  of  the  armistice,  had  completed  3,658  of 
them. 

Through  all  this  work  the  Naval  Gun  Factory,  which  had 
always  been  the  Navy's  main  reliance  for  its  broadside  guns, 
was  of  invaluable  assistance.  The  Factory  actually  built  more 
than  300  guns  and  mounts  of  various  sizes  during  the  war,  and 
it  examined  and  prepared  for  service  every  gun  and  mount 
produced  by  the  private  manufacturers.  In  addition  it  sent 
its  experts  out  to  the  various  new  ordnance  plants  and  helped 
them  to  solve  their  manufacturing  difficulties. 

The  Navy's  use  of  small  arms  is  not  great,  and  therefore 
its  production  of  such  ordnance  during  the  war  was  not  large. 
For  machine  guns  to  be  fired  from  fixed  mounts  on  the  decks  of 
destroyers  or  submarine  chasers  the  Bureau  adopted  the  Colt 
and  Marlin  guns,  both  heavy,  air-cooled  weapons,  and  pro- 
duced 1,500  of  the  former  and  1,605  ^^  ^^^  latter  during  the 
war.  The  Navy  adopted  the  Lewis  gun  as  its  light  machine 
•gun  and  procured  4,204  of  them  during  the  war.  From  the 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  309 

War  Department  the  Navy  bought  2,000  Browning  machine 
guns  and  442  Browning  rifles  for  the  Marine  Corps.  The  Navy 
also  procured  rifles,  pistols,  and  other  landing-force  equipment 
from  the  Army — the  totals  being  approximately  33,000  rifles, 
24,000  pistols  and  revolvers,  and  20,000  Very  signal  pistols. 

A  small-arms  novelty  was  the  line-throwing  rifle,  a  life- 
saving  appliance  developed  by  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  in  con- 
junction with  the  firm  of  William  Reid  &  Sons.  This  was  a 
caliber-.45  rifle  which  would  throw  a  metal  projectile  200  feet 
carrying  a  light  cotton  line  along  with  it.  The  company  built 
500  of  these. 

The  ammunition  problem  of  the  Navy  was  to  supply 
powder  and  shell  to  the  relatively  small  guns — from  1- 
pounders  up  to  6-inch  guns — since,  except  for  the  14-inch 
railroad  guns  sent  to  France,  the  bigger  guns  of  the  Navy 
were  not  fired  against  the  enemy.  The  Army's  powder  needs 
were  regarded  as  paramount  to  those  of  the  Navy,  and 
therefore  the  Navy,  after  the  declaration  of  war,  conceded  the 
existing  private  manufacturing  facilities  to  the  Army  and  pro- 
ceeded to  expand  its  own  powder  factory  at  Indian  Head, 
Maryland,  not  far  from  Washington.  This  work  continued 
throughout  the  war,  and  at  the  armistice  the  Naval  Powder 
Factory  alone  was  producing  at  a  rate  that  was  beyond  the  war 
consumption.  The  Navy,  however,  placed  contracts  early  in 
the  war  with  the  DuPont  Company  and  the  Hercules  Powder 
Company  for  a  total  of  43,000,000  pounds  of  powder,  most 
of  which  was  delivered  before  the  armistice. 

Nearly  all  the  guns  on  merchant  vessels  being  of  the  sizes 
which  use  fixed  ammunition,  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  had  to 
procure  a  large  number  of  brass  cartridge  cases.  These  were 
produced  in  sufficient  quantities  by  large  brass  manufacturing 
concerns,  among  which  were  the  Scoville  Company  of  Water- 
bury,  Connecticut,  the  Gorham  Manufacturing  Company  of 
Providence,  and  the  Toledo  Brass  Casting  Company  of 
Toledo. 

The  Navy's  shell  program,  too,  deferred  to  the  Army's,  the 
Navy  on  several  occasions  agreeing  to  cancel  entire  contracts 


310  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

for  projectiles  in  order  that  the  Army  Ordnance  Department 
might  have  the  use  of  badly  needed  facilities.  Through  the 
mediation  of  the  War  Industries  Board  and  of  the  i.\merican 
Iron  and  Steel  Institute,  there  was  always  close  cooperation 
and  harmony  between  the  two  ordnance  bureaus  in  their  shell 
projects.  In  the  course  of  its  shell  program  the  Navy  developed 
and  produced  a  flat-nosed  projectile  that  would  not  ricochet 
upon  striking  the  water,  but  would  dive  and  continue  in  an 
under- water  trajectorv\ 

The  Navy's  smokeless  powder  program,  though  not  to  be 
compared  with  the  Army's  in  size,  nevertheless  had  to  have 
its  raw  materials,  of  which  there  were  not  enough  to  satisfy 
the  Army  alone.  Consequently  the  Navy  Bureau  of  Ordnance 
was  forced  to  develop  its  own  sources  of  supply.  This  was 
particularly  true  with  reference  to  its  supply  of  nitrates.  In 
the  summer  of  1918  the  Bureau  began  the  construction  of  a 
nine-million-dollar  nitrogen-fixation  plant  at  Indian  Head, 
near  the  Naval  Powder  Factorv'.  This  plant  was  designed  to 
produce  1 1 5,000  pounds  of  nitric  acid  daily,  a  quantity  suffi- 
cient to  meet  the  needs  of  the  powder  plant  when  the  latter 
was  turning  out  its  capacity  production  of  100,000  pounds 
of  smokeless  powder  a  day.  The  Naval  Nitrates  Plant  adopted 
the  de  Jahn  fixation  process,  a  modification  of  the  original 
German  Haber  process,  by  which  ammonia  is  produced  by  the 
direct  S}Tithesis  of  nitrogen  and  hydrogen.  The  ammonia  is 
then  oxidized  by  the  Oswald  method  to  produce  nitric  acid. 
The  J.  G.  White  Engineering  Company  of  New  York,  under 
the  direction  of  the  General  Chemical  Company,  held  the  con- 
tract to  construct  this  plant;  but  at  the  armistice  the  construc- 
tion was  stopped  and  the  contracts  were  terminated. 

High  explosives  were  a  war  commodity  much  more  impor- 
tant to  the  Navy  than  smokeless  powder.  The  latter  was  used 
only  in  propelling  projectiles  from  guns,  and  the  naval  vessels 
did  not  get  many  chances  to  fire  their  guns  at  enemy  craft  or 
shore  fortifications.  High  explosives,  however,  were  the  burst- 
ing charges,  not  only  of  shell,  but  also  of  the  weapons  with 
which  the  Navy  met  the  enemy  on  his  own  plane  of  operations 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  311 

at  sea — namely,  under  the  surface.  To  load  its  mines,  depth 
charges,  bombs,  and  torpedoes,  and  also  its  shell,  the  Navy- 
needed  50,000,000  pounds  of  trinitrotoluol  per  annu?n,  or  a 
good  one-fourth  of  the  total  American  and  Canadian  annual 
production  of  that  explosive. 

But  the  general  explosives  program  of  the  War  Department 
alone  called  for  more  than  the  total  domestic  production  of 
T.  N.  T.  Therefore,  while  necessarily  submitting  to  a  curtail- 
ment and  rationing  of  its  T.  N.  T.  needs,  the  Navy  set  about 
finding  a  substitute.  The  limiting  factor  in  the  production  of 
trinitrotoluol  was  the  toluol  itself — witness  the  desperate 
efforts  of  the  Army  to  secure  it  by  stripping  illuminating  gas, 
building  recovery  plants  at  oil  refineries,  and  encouraging  the 
erection  of  by-product  coke  ovens.  Next  to  toluol  in  the  so- 
called  benzine  scale  is  the  basic  material  xylol.  Nitrated  xylol 
is  an  explosive  practically  as  effective  as  nitrated  toluol 
(T.  N.  T.).  The  manufacture  of  T.  N.  X.,  as  trinitroxydol  is 
called,  demanded  both  nitric  and  sulphuric  acid,  as  does  that  of 
T.  N.  T.,  but  not  toluol.  Therefore  the  Navy  adopted  T.  N.  X. 
as  a  substitute  explosive,  and  contracted  with  the  DuPont 
Company  for  the  erection  of  a  huge  T.  N.  X.  plant,  to  cost 
nearly  $4,000,000  and  to  produce  30,000,000  pounds  of 
T.  N.  X.  annually.  The  one  disadvantage  of  T.  N.  X.  as  a 
war  explosive  was  that  it  did  not  mold  readily  into  mines  and 
other  containers;  but,  mixed  with  a  small  amount  of  T.  N.  T., 
it  gained  a  satisfactory  plasticity. 

The  erection  of  the  Navy's  T.  N.  X.  plant  at  Barksdale, 
Wisconsin,  was  one  of  the  great  industrial  achievements  of 
the  war.  The  contractors  began  work  in  March,  1918,  before 
the  contracts  were  even  signed.  The  plant  was  turning  out 
satisfactory  T.  N.  X.  in  October,  1918,  and  on  the  day  of  the 
armistice  was  within  three  weeks  of  reaching  the  stage  of 
capacity  production.  T.  N.  X.  was  not  an  unknown  substance, 
but  it  had  never  before  been  produced  on  a  large  commercial 
scale.  The  achievement  of  the  DuPonts  in  developing  this 
great  manufacture  in  eight  months  includes  the  development 
of  practicable  factory  processes  by  laboratory  experimentation. 


312  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Once  it  had  embarked  on  this  great  project,  the  Navy  had 
next  to  turn  to  the  development  of  the  supplies  of  xylol,  only 
a  little  of  which  was  being  produced.  Being  a  coal-tar  product, 
xylol  comes  from  the  same  sources  that  supply  toluol — coke 
ovens,  oil  refineries,  and  the  like.  The  Navy  Bureau  of  Ord- 
nance entered  into  contracts  with  a  hundred  or  more  source 
plants  to  supply  crude  xylol  to  the  Barrett  Company,  which 
contracted  with  the  Navy  to  refine  the  product  for  use  in  the 
T.  N.  X.  plant; 

It  was  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  of  the  Navy  which  discov- 
ered after  the  armistice  the  enormous  extent  to  which  Ger- 
many had  developed  the  fixation  of  atmospheric  nitrogen.  The 
Bureau  sent  Lieutenant  R.  E.  McConnell,  U.  S.  N.  R.  F.,  to 
Germany  when  the  fighting  ceased,  primarily  to  study  the 
fixation  processes  in  use  there  with  the  view  of  perfecting  our 
own  methods.  At  Ludwigshafen  Lieutenant  McConnell  dis- 
covered a  plant  with  an  annual  capacity  of  100,000  tons  of 
nitric  acid,  ten  times  the  capacity  of  the  first  anny  fixation 
plant  built  at  Sheffield,  Alabama.  The  Germans  had  started 
the  erection  of  this  plant  in  1907,  but  it  was  not  until  the  be- 
ginning of  1914  that  they  attained  success  in  the  fixation 
process — a  fact  which  historians,  in  fixing  responsibility  for 
the  World  War,  are  likely  to  regard  as  significant.  From  the 
early  months  of  1915  until  the  defeat  of  the  German  Army  this 
plant  had  worked  night  and  day,  with  the  exception  of  one 
12-hour  interval  when  the  plant  was  repairing  its  water  system, 
temporarily  out  of  commission  after  the  explosion  of  a  bomb 
well  placed  by  an  Allied  aviator. 

But  this  plant  afforded  not  half  the  total  German  domestic 
supply  of  nitrogen.  On  the  outskirts  of  Berlin  another  huge 
fixation  plant  had  been  erected,  a  plant  half  as  large  again 
as  the  one  at  Ludwigshafen.  These  two  plants  gave  Germany 
an  output  of  nitrogen  greater  than  the  combined  importations 
of  nitrates  from  Chile  by  all  of  the  Allies  during  any  one  war 
year.  Germany  started  the  war  with  a  reserve  of  more  than 
500,000  tons  of  Chilean  nitrates,  a  quantity  augmented  by 
200,000  tons  taken  as  booty  in  the  fall  of  Antwerp. 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  313 

Although  the  arming  of  vessels  was  important, — without  it 
the  convoy  system  might  not  have  been  the  success  that  it 
was, — it  was  nevertheless  in  the  production  of  under-water 
weapons  to  harry  and  destroy  the  submarine  in  its  own  ele- 
ment that  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  scored  its  most  signal 
inventive  and  industrial  victories.  One  of  these  weapons  was 
the  depth  charge.  Before  Germany  showed  the  world  the 
elusiveness  of  the  submarine,  the  consensus  of  naval  opinion 
was  that  the  gun  and  the  torpedo  would  provide  a  sufficient 
defense  against  submarines.  In  those  days  submarines  were 
slow  in  emerging  and  submerging,  and  it  was  thought  that 
gun  pointers  on  surface  craft  could  make  things  sufficiently 
interesting  for  submarines  to  hold  them  in  check.  The  Ger- 
man submarine  commanders,  however,  became  exceedingly 
expert  in  their  work,  and  the  under-water  boats  themselves 
were  greatly  improved.  The  submarine,  with  its  low  freeboard, 
could  see  the  approach  of  a  surface  vessel  long  before  the 
latter  could  make  out  the  submarine.  The  submerging  time 
became  greatly  reduced.  Therefore  it  became  evident  that  gun- 
fire was  of  little  avail  against  submarines,  and  that  if  the 
Allies  were  ever  to  make  headway  in  an  offensive  campaign 
against  the  U-boats  they  must  invent  weapons  that  would  go 
down  and  get  the  enemy  where  he  chose  to  live  at  sea. 

The  depth  charge,  a  sinking  bomb  that  could  be  made  to 
explode  at  any  desired  depth,  was  one  of  the  responses  to  this 
need.  For  its  effectiveness  the  bomb  utilized  the  principle  of 
the  incompressibility  of  water.  The  so-called  "water  hammer" 
is  familiar  to  anyone  who  has  ever  turned  off  a  water  tap  sud- 
denly and  heard  the  noise  of  the  shock  produced  by  the  water 
hammer  within  the  pipe.  The  water  hammer  resulting  from  a 
heavy  explosion  under  the  surface  of  the  ocean  could  be  relied 
upon  to  damage  any  submarine  near  the  explosion  and  at  close 
range  even  to  sink  it. 

A  contact  charge  was  neither  desirable  nor  necessary — un- 
desirable because  of  the  improbability  of  dropping  a  charge 
so  accurately  that  in  sinking  it  would  hit  a  submarine,  un- 
necessary because  of  the  water  hammer.  Therefore  the  inven- 


314  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

tors  set  to  work  to  develop  firing  mechanisms  that  could  be 
set  for  desired  depths  and  would  touch  off  the  explosives  when 
the  charges  sank  to  those  depths.  These  firing  devices  were 
among  the  Allies'  best-guarded  secrets,  and  we  had  no  knowl- 
edge of  their  mechanical  principles  until  we  too  became  a 
belligerent.  Then  the  Allies — the  British  had  done  the  most 
advanced  work  in  this  direction — gave  us  their  secrets.  But  it 
was  not  until  after  the  United  States  entered  the  war  that  the 
depth  charge  received  extensive  development  and  use. 

Yet  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  was  not  caught  entirely  unpre- 
pared with  depth  charges.  Its  experts  had  been  studying  the 
problem  and  had  developed  a  depth  charge  of  their  own.  In 
Februar}',  before  the  declaration  of  war,  the  Bureau  placed 
contracts  for  the  manufacture  of  10,000  of  these  American 
depth  charges,  and  the  contractors  so  pressed  their  work  that 
they  were  able  to  deliver  charges  immediately  after  America 
became  a  belligerent. 

For  the  depth  charge  of  this  early  type,  however,  not  much 
can  be  said.  It  was  fired  by  the  float-and-line  principle.  When 
a  charge  of  this  type  was  thrown  overboard,  a  small  buoy 
detached  itself  from  the  charge  and  floated  on  the  surface. 
To  this  buoy  was  attached  a  line,  which  was  paid  out  by  the 
charge  as  it  sank.  At  any  predetermined  depth  the  depth  charge 
ceased  to  pay  out  line,  and  the  jerk  then  given  to  the  charge 
by  the  floating  buoy  fired  the  charge.  This  firing  device,  though 
ingenious,  was  erratic,  and  was  not  to  be  compared  in  eflficiency 
with  the  hydrostatic  pressure  firing  gears  developed  by  the 
British  and  later  by  ourselves.  The  chief  defect  of  the  early 
American  depth  charge,  however,  was  its  small  explosive 
charge.  It  contained  fifty  pounds  of  high  explosives,  whereas 
the  contemporaneous  British  depth  charges,  which  the  British 
Government  made  available  for  our  inspection  immediately 
after  April  6,  1917,  held  300  pounds.  The  water  hammer 
which  we  had  proposed  to  use  against  the  enemy  submarines 
was  hardly  more  than  a  tack  hammer,  whereas  the  British 
were  using  a  sledge. 

The  inspection  of  the  British  charges  at  once  changed  the 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  315 

ideas  of  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  as  to  this  sort  of  war  7nate- 
riel.  The  operating  side  of  the  Navy  at  once  urged  the  adop- 
tion of  the  British  charge  as  it  was.  Our  own  designers,  how- 
ever, had  meanwhile  been  busy  working  on  firing  mechanisms 
and  had  developed  at  the  Newport  Torpedo  Station  a  hydro- 
static firing  gear  that  gave  a  range  of  depth  setting  greater  than 
the  British  gear.  Consequently  the  Bureau  adopted  the  British 
cylinder  and  the  British  standard  weight  of  300  pounds  of 
high  explosive,  but  fitted  to  this  the  .\merican  firing  gear  and 
called  this  assemblage  of  parts  the  American  Mark  II  depth 
charge.  Some  35,000  of  these  charges  were  produced.  Our 
destroyer  crews  considered  the  American  charge  to  be  fully  as 
effective  as  the  British  and  even  more  reliable,  as  the  British 
themselves  also  testified. 

The  principle  that  pressures  ^mde^  water  vary  with  the 
depth  made  the  hydrostatic  pressure  firing  gear  possible.  The 
later  American  gear  could  be  set  to  explode  the  charge  at  any 
one  of  several  depths  from  50  feet  to  200  feet.  The  British 
firing  gear  protruded  beyond  the  cylinder  end,  whereas  ours 
was  installed  protectively  inside  the  case.  The  American 
charge  was  equipped  with  a  safety  device  that  made  it  impos- 
sible for  the  charge  to  explode  until  it  was  at  least  fifteen 
feet  under  water.  A  depth  charge  was  simply  a  metal  cylinder 
eighteen  inches  in  diameter  and  twenty-eight  inches  long,  the 
cylinder  containing  the  explosive  and  the  firing  mechanism. 
Depth  charges  were  ungainly  missiles  in  appearance :  the  sailor 
men  descriptively  called  them  ash  cans. 

Thousands  of  American  depth  charges  were  manufactured, 
but,  as  the  use  of  them  developed  with  the  development  of 
anti-submarine  tactics,  the  supply  was  never  so  great  as  the 
demand.  The  Bureau  of  Ordnance  built  1,000  depth  charges 
holding  600  pounds  of  T.  N.  T.  instead  of  the  commoner  300 
pounds.  Another  late  development  increased  the  depth  setting 
of  the  firing  device  to  300  feet. 

The  first  depth  charges  were  carried  singly  on  slings  which 
were  dropped  over  the  stem  of  a  destroyer  at  the  will  of  an 
officer  holding  a  control  lever  on  the  bridge.  The  increased 


3i6  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

use  of  depth  charges  and  the  setting  up  of  so-called  barrages 
of  depth  bombs  around  the  suspected  positions  of  hostile  sub- 
marines made  necessary  the  use  of  more  rapidly  working 
launching  gear,  and  apparatus  of  two  sorts  was  adopted  and 
used  in  combination  on  the  destroyers. 

The  first  sort  of  apparatus  was  known  as  multiple  launching 
gear.  This  gear  consisted  of  a  pair  of  parallel  tracks,  each 
holding  a  number  of  depth  charges  ready  for  dropping  over 
the  stern.  A  pull  of  a  lever  on  the  bridge  sent  one  of  the 
charges  overboard.  The  early  gear  of  this  sort  held  sixteen 
charges,  eight  on  a  track.  A  later  development  increased  the 
capacity  of  the  gear  to  twenty-six  charges  in  all.  Another  sort, 
holding  ten  charges,  was  designed  for  small  boats.  The  Bureau 
of  Ordnance  built  several  hundred  sets  of  these  gears. 

A  more  picturesque  launching  apparatus  was  the  Y-gun. 
This  was  an  American  development  of  the  British  Thornycroft 
depth-charge  thrower,  a  single-barreled  gun  on  the  end  of 
which  rested  a  depth  charge  lashed  to  an  arbor,  or  stem,  which 
fitted  within  the  gun  barrel.  A  charge  of  propelling  powder, 
when  touched  off,  threw  out  the  depth  charge  to  a  considerable 
distance  from  the  destroyer's  rail.  An  officer  of  the  American 
Bureau  of  Ordnance  adapted  the  non-recoil  principle  of  the 
Davis  gun  to  a  double  depth-charge  thrower  of  the  Thorny- 
croft type.  In  the  Davis  gun  the  barrel  is  open  at  both  ends, 
and  the  recoil  is  nullified  by  the  reaction  of  the  propelling 
explosion  against  a  weight,  equal  to  the  weight  of  the  shell, 
which  is  expelled  from  the  rear  of  the  barrel  as  the  gun  is 
fired.  The  American  officer.  Lieutenant  Commander  A.  J. 
Stone,  U.  S.  N.  R.  F.,  put  two  Thornycroft  guns  together  at 
an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees.  The  recoil  forces,  operating 
against  each  other  at  this  angle,  removed  all  but  a  small  part 
of  the  firing  load  from  the  deck  of  the  vessel  carrying  the  gun. 
The  Y-gun,  of  course,  could  not  be  fired  one  barrel  at  a  time ; 
it  always  threw  two  charges  simultaneously.  These  were 
thrown  out  at  distances  up  to  eighty  yards,  the  distance  de- 
pending upon  the  size  of  the  propelling  charge. 

The  Y-gun  was  a  simple  manufacturing  proposition.  Start- 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  317 

ing  work  on  November  24,  1917,  the  General  Ordnance  Com- 
pany, Groton,  Connecticut,  produced  the  first  finished  guns 
on  December  10.  The  Navy  put  947  Y-guns  in  service  before 
the  armistice. 

Perhaps  the  most  distinguished  service  rendered  by  the 
Bureau  of  Ordnance  of  the  Navy  Department  during  the  war 
was  the  part  it  played  in  setting  up  the  Northern  Barrage, 
that  famous  barricade  of  T.  N.  T.  which  virtually  closed  to 
enemy  submarines  the  wide  entrance  to  the  North  Sea  between 
the  northern  tip  of  Scotland  and  the  Norwegian  coast.  The 
Bureau  inaugurated  the  plan  for  this  international  British- 
American  enterprise,  developed  the  special-type  mine  which 
made  the  barrage  possible,  and  actually  manufactured  most 
of  the  mines  which  went  into  it.  The  Northern  Barrage  was 
one  of  the  important  factors  contributing  to  the  defeat  of  Ger- 
many. One  captured  German  submarine  commander  testified 
that  the  mines  of  the  type  used  in  the  barrage  were  more 
dreaded  by  the  Germans  than  any  other  anti-submarine  meas- 
ure. After  the  construction  of  the  barrage  the  Government  of 
Norway  was  forced  to  announce  its  intention  to  mine  the 
Norwegian  territorial  waters  because  of  the  flagrant  use  of 
these  forbidden  waters  by  the  German  submarines — another 
indication  of  the  effectiveness  of  the  barrage.  There  is  no 
question  that  the  barrage  greatly  restricted  the  free  use  of 
Germany's  most  potent  weapon;  and  since  Germany  had 
staked  everything  on  the  success  of  her  submarine  warfare, 
and  had  even  courted  the  belligerency  of  the  United  States 
in  order  to  employ  it,  it  follows  that,  when  the  measures  of 
the  Allies  not  only  checked  the  submarine,  but  even  began  to 
reduce  its  destructiveness  rapidly  toward  the  vanishing  point, 
the  German  cause  was  as  good  as  lost. 

The  notion  of  blockading  the  German  submarines  in  their 
home  bases  had  fascinated  the  Navy  Bureau  of  Ordnance  in 
Washington  for  some  months  before  America  entered  the  war. 
It  was  obvious  that,  if  this  could  be  done,  it  would  be  a  com- 
plete protection  to  any  American  line  of  communication  be- 
tween this  country  and  France.  It  was  impossible  to  close  the 


3i8  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

actual  German  harbors,  because  the  enemy  maintained  full 
control  of  his  own  territorial  waters.  The  more  difficult,  but 
the  next  best,  thing  was  to  close  the  exits  from  the  North 
Sea — the  narrow  strait  between  Dover  and  Calais  and  the  230- 
mile  stretch  of  deep,  rough,  stormy,  and  foggy  sea  between 
Scotland  and  Norway.  The  Bureau  adopted  this  plan  as  an 
ideal  toward  which  it  should  work,  if  not  as  an  actual  policy. 
When  we  declared  war  against  Germany  our  people  discovered 
that  the  British  had  contemplated  such  a  scheme  more  than 
once,  but  had  always  abandoned  it  as  a  visionary  and  imprac- 
ticable undertaking. 

Three  methods  of  erecting  an  anti-submarine  wall  were  con- 
templated: (1)  with  nets  and  entanglements;  (2)  with  nets 
in  combination  with  mines;  and  (3)  with  mines  alone.  With 
materiel  of  types  then  known  to  the  Allies,  not  one  of  the 
three  possible  methods  was  feasible.  Nets'? — there  were  sev- 
eral objections  to  them,  but  one  was  sufficient:  they  could  not 
be  planted  and  maintained  in  water  as  deep  as  that  between 
Norway  and  Scotland,  Nets  and  mines  in  combination? — the 
same  objection,  at  least.  Mines  alone?  .   .   . 

The  mine  of  the  most  improved  type  in  the  early  spring  of 
1917  had  the  limitation  that  it  would  explode  only  upon 
contact  with  the  hull  of  a  vessel.  It  carried  enough  explosive 
to  wreck  a  hull  within  one  hundred  feet  of  it,  but  it  would 
not  go  off  unless  the  hull  actually  struck  it.  The  combined 
inventive  powers  of  the  Allies  had  been  unable  to  invent  a 
mine  any  more  efficient  than  this.  The  submarine  could  run 
on  the  surface  or  at  a  depth  as  great  as  240  feet  or  at  any 
depth  between  these  extremes.  Therefore,  to  build  an  effec- 
tive barrier  of  contact  mines  between  Norway  and  Scotland 
meant  the  erection  of  a  wall  at  least  200  feet  high  and  230 
miles  long,  sowing  mines  in  this  wall  so  thickly  that  no  sub- 
marine could  go  through  without  hitting  one  of  them,  and 
anchoring  the  whole  wall  in  water  in  places  as  much  as  1,100 
feet  deep.  The  combined  manufacturing  facilities  of  the  anti- 
German  world  could  not  produce  so  many  mines  within  a 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  319 

reasonable  time  and  at  the  same  time  turn  out  the  other 
munitions  which  the  armies  and  navies  had  to  have. 

Moreover,  a  main  objection  to  all  barriers  of  this  sort  was 
that  they  had  to  be  heavily  patrolled  to  prevent  the  enemy 
from  sweeping  and  clearing  passages.  The  German  submarine 
commanders  boasted  that  they  were  wont  to  use  the  hemi- 
spheres of  contact  mines  for  punch  bowls,  meaning  that  it  was 
easy  to  clear  them  away.  The  patrol  line  across  the  northern  en- 
trance to  the  North  Sea  was  so  long  as  to  be  difficult  of  main- 
tenance. If  too  thin,  it  could  be  broken  up  by  enemy  surface 
raids.  If  maintained  with  heavy  vessels,  the  latter  would  be 
exposed  to  attack  by  hostile  submarines  and  the  losses  would 
be  heavy.  If  a  mine  could  be  developed  that  would  largely 
protect  itself,  a  mine  which  the  enemy  could  remove  only  at 
great  peril,  then  the  situation  might  be  different. 

Reluctantly  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance  accepted  these  con- 
clusions of  the  British,  reached  by  them  only  after  long  and 
bitter  experience  with  the  submarine.  But  the  Bureau  did  not 
abandon  its  project.  It  set  forth  resolutely  to  develop  a  mine 
that  would  make  the  barrage  scheme  practicable. 

A  few  days  after  the  American  declaration  of  war,  one 
Ralph  C.  Browne,  an  electrician  of  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
alighted  from  a  train  at  Washington  and  enquired  the  way  to 
the  Navy  Department.  Had  the  importance  of  Mr.  Browne 
to  the  Allied  cause  then  been  recognized  and  had  it  been 
discreet  to  stage  a  demonstration  merited  by  the  significance 
of  this  visit,  instead  of  riding  down  Pennsylvania  Avenue 
obscurely  and  humbly  in  a  street  car  Mr.  Browne  would  have 
been  escorted  by  the  Marine  Band  and  a  regiment  of  cavalry; 
for  in  his  pocket  he  bore  the  plans  for  an  invention  that  made 
the  Northern  Barrage  possible.  The  inventor  himself  did  not 
then  realize  the  importance  of  what  he  possessed.  He  brought 
to  Washington  the  plans  for  a  submerged  gun,  which  he  called 
a  "monkey  on  a  stick."  This  gun  he  proposed  to  set  under 
water  in  areas  haunted  by  submarines,  like  the  trap  guns  of 
a  meat  and  fur  hunter.  The  gun  itself  the  navy  experts  re- 
jected as  impracticable.  The  amazing  attribute  of  this  gun, 


320  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

however,  the  revolutionary  thing,  was  that  it  would  discharge 
automatically  whenever  anything  came  within  a  considerable 
radius  of  it. 

Here  was  the  firing  mechanism  which  the  naval  inventors  of 
the  world  had  for  years  been  seeking  in  vain.  The  Navy  kept 
Mr.  Browne  right  in  Washington  and  attached  him  to  the 
Mine  Section  of  the  Bureau  of  Ordnance.  By  June  the  Bureau 
had  developed  a  successful  mine  embodying  this  firing  device 
(which  is  still  held  as  a  national  secret) — a  mine  which  would 
do  the  work  of  three  mines  of  the  contact  type;  a  mine  most 
definitely  not  in  the  punch-bowl  class,  but  one  which  it  was 
exceedingly  hazardous  even  to  approach,  as  nearly  a  score  of 
sunken  and  damaged  vessels  in  our  own  mine-sweeping  fleet 
after  the  armistice,  and  numerous  dead  and  injured  sailors  on 
those  vessels,  gave  tragic  testimony.  The  new  mine,  known  as 
the  Mark  VI,  brought  the  northern  barrage  project  well  within 
the  bounds  of  manufacturing  and  operational  practicability. 

The  Secretary  of  the  Navy  and  the  Chief  of  Naval  Opera- 
tions approved  the  barrage  plan  in  August.  In  September  the 
Admiralty  prepared  the  plans  for  the  division  of  the  work  of 
mine  planting.  The  British  Admiralty  finally  approved  the 
project  in  October.  On  October  29  President  Wilson  approved 
the  project  in  the  presence  of  the  Cabinet.  Meanwhile  the 
Bureau  of  Ordnance  had  showed  its  courage  by  proceeding  on 
October  3,  nearly  a  month  before  the  project  was  officially 
adopted,  to  let  contracts  for  the  manufacture  of  100,000  such 
mines.  Thus  the  mines  were  ready  when  the  mine-laying  fleet 
was  ready  to  operate  in  the  spring  of  1918. 

The  Mark  VI  mine  consisted  of  two  principal  parts — the 
mine  sphere  and  the  anchor.  The  mine  sphere  was  simply  two 
hemispheres  of  steel  welded  together  at  the  equator.  The  re- 
sultant sphere  contained  the  explosive  (300  pounds  of 
T.  N.  T.),  the  sensitive  firing  mechanism,  and  the  safety  de- 
vices. The  latter  were  obviously  necessary  for  the  well-being 
of  the  mine  planters.  The  detonator  was  never  in  contact  with 
the  main  explosive  charge  until  the  mine  had  sunk  thirty  feet, 
when  it  was  inserted   in  its  proper  place  by   a  hydrostatic 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance,  U.  S.  N. 

MARK  VI  MINE  RESTING  ON  ANCHOR 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance,   U .  S.  N. 


AMERICAN  MINE  ANCHOR  OPEN  TO  SHOW 
DRUM  AND  CABLE 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordnance,   U.  S.  N. 

EXPLOSION  OF  DEPTH  CHARGE 


Photo  from  Bureau  of  Ordna 


AMERICAN  MINE  SQUADRON  PLANTING  NORTHERN 
BARRAGE 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  321 

device.  By  that  time  the  hull  of  the  mine  planter  would  be 
well  out  of  the  sensitive  area  set  up  by  the  firing  mechanism. 
Experiment  showed  that,  if  a  mine  detonator  not  in  contact 
with  the  main  explosive  charge  went  off,  the  T.  N.  T.  would 
not  be  fired.  A  further  safety  device,  also  operated  hydro- 
statically,  rendered  the  firing  mechanism  itself  inoperative 
until  the  mine  was  thirty  feet  under  the  surface.  Thus,  both 
safety  devices  had  to  fail  before  there  could  be  a  premature 
explosion.  Eighty-five  thousand  such  mines  were  shipped 
loaded  to  Scotland;  over  56,000  of  them  were  actually 
planted;  and  there  was  not  one  accident. 

The  mine  anchor  was  the  British  Mark  VIII  sinker,  some- 
what modified.  This  was  simply  a  steel  box  two  and  a  half 
feet  square  and  two  feet  high,  weighing  with  its  contents 
about  816  pounds.  It  contained  the  mooring  cable  on  a  revolv- 
ing drum  and  an  ingenious  device  for  drawing  down  the  mine 
to  any  predetermined  depth  under  the  surface  and  mooring  it 
there.  This  depth  device  consisted  chiefly  of  a  plummet  con- 
taining an  unreeling  cord  which  could  be  set  for  any  depth 
to  which  it  was  desired  to  sink  the  mine. 

The  action  of  mine  and  anchor  after  leaving  the  launching 
rails  of  the  mine  planter  is  about  as  follows :  Before  launching, 
the  mine  is  attached  to  the  anchor,  both  together  weighing 
1,400  pounds.  They  strike  the  water  sideways,  but  the  buoy- 
ancy of  the  mine  immediately  rights  the  anchor.  The  weight 
of  the  anchor  being  sufficient  to  overcome  the  buoyancy  of  the 
mine,  both  begin  to  sink  together,  slowly,  until  the  plummet 
is  released.  The  plummet  is  attached  to  the  outside  of  the 
anchor  box.  Within  the  plummet  is  a  cord  which  pays  out 
easily  and  allows  the  plummet  to  sink  swiftly.  We  will  say 
that  the  mine  planter  is  working  in  water  1,000  feet  deep  and 
desires  to  anchor  this  mine  sixty  feet  below  the  surface.  The 
plummet  cord  is  set  to  pay  out  sixty  feet  and  then  stop.  When 
the  plummet  reaches  this  sixty-foot  limit  below  the  slowly 
sinking  anchor,  it  jerks  on  its  cord,  and  the  jerk  releases  the 
mine  from  the  anchor.  The  main  cable  drum  within  the  anchor 
is  now  revolving  freely,  and  the  mine  bobs  to  the  surface,  as 


322  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

the  mooring  cable  pays  out  from  the  drum,  and  floats  there. 
Relieved  of  the  retarding  buoyancy  of  the  mine  sphere,  the 
anchor  now  sinks  swiftly,  paying  out  mooring  cable  as  it  sinks 
and  piloted  into  the  depths  by  a  plummet  down  at  the  end  of 
a  cord  sixty  feet  long.  When  the  anchor  reaches  the  depth  of 
940  feet,  the  plummet  strikes  the  bottom.  When  the  plummet's 
weight  is  taken  off  the  anchor,  the  mooring  cable  drum  is 
automatically  locked.  The  anchor  sinks  slowly  now,  for  it  is 
pulling  the  mine  down  with  it  once  more;  and  when  it  has 
sunk  sixty  feet  in  this  way,  the  mine  anchor  itself  touches  the 
bottom,  thus  mooring  the  mine  sixty  feet  below  the  surface. 

This  was  the  complicated  mechanism  which  the  Navy  pro- 
posed to  manufacture  to  the  number  of  100,000,  laying  the 
development  plans  with  the  view  of  gaining  a  production  of 
1,000  completed  mines  and  anchors  a  day.  It  is  believed  that 
this  was  the  only  great  single  munitions  project  carried  out 
in  the  United  States  about  which  the  enemy  received  no  ink- 
ling of  information  from  his  secret  agents  in  the  United 
States.  Only  a  few  persons  in  the  United  States  knew  about 
the  mine,  and  they  were  trusted  officers  of  the  United  States 
Navy.  It  was  important  that  the  German  should  not  learn 
of  this  development  in  mining  in  advance  of  the  actual  use 
of  the  mines,  or  else  he  might  be  able  to  perfect  a  defense  while 
the  manufacture  of  the  mines  was  in  progress.  Secrecy  as  well 
as  manufacturing  speed  was  gained  by  separating  the  mecha- 
nism into  its  component  parts  and  allotting  contracts  for  the 
manufacture  of  parts  only.  More  than  500  contractors  and 
subcontractors  built  parts  for  the  mines,  and  not  one  of  them 
knew  the  use  of  the  thing  which  he  was  making.  The  Bureau  of 
Ordnance  even  allowed  the  assembly  plants  to  assemble  no 
complete  mines,  but  only  unrelated  groups  of  parts.  The 
assembled  groups  of  parts  were  shipped  to  the  American  mine 
bases  at  Invergordon  and  Inverness  on  the  shore  of  Moray 
Firth  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Scotland,  there  to  be  assembled 
into  complete  units  by  navy  personnel. 

The  mine  spheres,  however,  were  loaded  with  T.  N.  T.  in 
this   country,   and   for   this   purpose   the   Navy   erected    and 


NAVY  ORDNANCE  323 

operated  a  mine-loading  plant  of  twenty-two  buildings  on  a 
swampy  site  at  St.  Juliens  Creek  near  Norfolk,  Virginia.  This 
plant  was  built  during  the  winter  of  1917-1918  at  a  cost  of 
$400,000,  was  ready  to  operate  in  March,  1918,  and  reached 
a  loading  rate  of  approximately  1,500  mines  daily.  The  Du- 
Pont  Company  loaded  some  of  the  mines  at  its  plant  at 
Barksdale,  Wisconsin.  The  Navy  took  over  one  of  the  largest 
terminal  piers  in  the  Hampton  Roads  district,  that  of  the 
Southern  Railway  Company  at  Pinner  Point,  and  used  it 
exclusively  in  the  export  of  mines  for  the  Northern  Barrage. 
Twenty-three  cargo  vessels  became  the  transatlantic  mine 
carriers.  These  were  all  small  ships,  built  on  the  Great  Lakes, 
but  admirably  adapted  for  the  work.  It  was  not  desirable  to 
ship  the  materiel  on  large  vessels,  for  the  loss  of  such  a  ship 
loaded  with  mine  parts  might  seriously  have  embarrassed  the 
barrage  project.  The  Lake  Moor^  torpedoed  on  April  11,  1918, 
was  the  only  one  of  the  mine  carriers  lost. 

It  is  not  within  the  province  of  this  account  to  go  into  any 
detailed  description  of  the  work  of  laying  the  Northern  Bar- 
rage. It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  a  fleet  of  mine  planters — 
mostly  fairly  fast  coastwise  passenger  steamers  converted  at 
various  shipyards  to  this  purpose — was  assembled  and  placed 
under  the  command  of  Rear  Admiral  Joseph  Strauss,  who 
arrived  with  them  at  the  Scottish  bases  on  May  26.  The  first 
mines  were  planted  on  June  8,  when  the  American  planters 
laid  a  line  of  them  forty-seven  miles  long.  The  two  bases 
became  able  to  assemble  more  than  1,300  mines  a  day;  the 
Mine  Squadron  planted  as  many  as  6,820  mines  in  four  hours. 

The  barrage  was  not  a  single  wall  of  mines  laid  at  different 
levels,  but  a  belt  from  fifteen  to  thirty-five  miles  wide, 
through  which  it  was  exceedingly  dangerous  for  a  submarine  to 
go.  The  surface  was  more  heavily  mined  than  the  depths. 
Mines  were  planted  on  three  general  levels,  one  making  it 
dangerous  for  craft  on  the  surface,  another  making  it  danger- 
ous for  submarines  submerged  from  90  to  160  feet  below  the 
surface,  and  a  third  making  it  dangerous  for  submarines 
traveling  from  160  to  240  feet  below  the  surface.  The  barrage 


324  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

extended  from  the  Norwegian  three-mile  limit  to  within  ten 
miles  of  the  Orkney  Islands,  the  inshore  unmined  channel 
being  heavily  patrolled.  The  planting  of  the  barrage  was  an 
international  project,  the  Americans  being  assigned  the  work 
of  laying  the  mines  in  the  deep-water  middle  sections,  and 
the  British  in  the  two  shore  sections.  The  Americans,  however, 
laid  not  only  all  the  mines  in  their  own  section,  but  also  over 
16,000  mines  in  the  two  British  sections.  The  Americans  laid 
56,61 1  mines  in  the  Northern  Barrage  and  the  British  15,000. 
The  barrage  cost  about  $80,000,000,  and  it  is  credited  with 
the  sinking  of  eleven  submarines  and  the  damaging  of  six 
others. 

After  the  armistice  Rear  Admiral  Strauss,  U.  S.  N.,  com- 
manded a  large  force  of  mine  sweepers,  submarine  chasers, 
and  trawlers  in  the  dangerous  work  of  removing  the  American 
mines  in  the  Northern  Barrage.  Two  of  the  boats  were  sunk, 
two  officers  and  six  enlisted  men  killed,  several  others  injured, 
and  fifteen  other  vessels  of  the  sweeping  force  were  damaged 
by  explosions  occurring  during  this  dangerous  work.  Never- 
theless, the  American  mines  were  all  cleared  away  by  Sep- 
tember 30,  1919. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
AIRPLANES 

WHEN  the  United  States  entered  the  war  against 
Germany  in  1917,  there  was  no  phase  of  her 
forthcoming  industrial  effort  from  which  so  much 
was  expected  as  from  the  building  of  airplanes  and  equipment 
for  aerial  warfare.  Yet  there  was  no  phase  of  the  immense 
undertaking  in  which  the  United  States  was  so  utterly  unpre- 
pared. In  many  other  branches  of  the  work  of  providing  mate- 
riel for  a  modern  army,  America,  however  inadequately  ac- 
quainted she  might  be  with  the  developments  which  had  gone 
on  in  Europe  since  1914,  had  splendid  resources  of  skill  and 
equipment  which  could  quickly  turn  from  the  pursuits  of 
peace  to  those  of  war.  But  there  was  no  large  existing  indus- 
try in  the  United  States  which  could  turn  easily  to  the  produc- 
tion of  airplanes,  for  such  airplanes  as  were  known  in  Europe 
in  1917  had  never  been  built  in  the  United  States. 

It  seems  difficult  now  for  us  to  realize  how  utterly  unlearned 
we  were,  both  in  official  and  technical  quarters,  in  the  design, 
the  production,  and  the  use  of  aeronautical  equipment  in  those 
early  days  of  1917.  Here  in  America  mechanical  flight  had 
been  born;  but  we  had  lived  to  see  other  nations  develop  the 
invention  into  an  industry  and  a  science  that  were  a  closed 
book  to  our  people.  In  the  three  years  of  warfare  before  Ameri- 
can participation,  the  airplane  had  been  forced  through  a  whole 
generation  of  normal  mechanical  evolution.  Of  this  progress 
we  were  aware  only  as  nontechnical  and  distant  observers. 
Such  military  study  of  the  progress  as  we  had  conducted  was 
casual.  It  had,  in  fact,  brought  to  America  scarcely  a  single 
basic  fact  on  which  we  could  build  our  contemplated  industry. 

When  the  United  States  became  a  belligerent  no  American- 


326  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

built  airplane  had  ever  mounted  a  machine  gun  or  carried  any- 
other  than  the  simplest  of  necessary'  instruments.  Such  things 
as  oxygen  apparatus,  electrically  heated  clothing  for  aviators, 
radio-communication  with  airplanes,  landing  and  bombing 
flares,  electric  lighting  systems  for  planes,  bomb-dropping  de- 
vices, suitable  compasses,  instruments  for  measuring  height 
and  speed,  and  the  like, — in  short,  all  the  modem  parapher- 
nalia that  complete  the  efficiency  of  combat  airplanes, — were 
almost  entirely  unknown  to  us. 

The  best  of  the  prewar  activities  of  America  in  this  field  had 
produced  some  useful  airplane  engines  and  a  few  planes  which 
the  countries  then  at  war  were  willing  to  use  in  the  training 
of  aviators.  Within  the  Army  itself  there  was  only  a  trifling 
nucleus  of  skill  around  which  could  be  built  an  organization 
expert  and  sophisticated.  We  had  in  the  official  files  no  ade- 
quate information  as  to  sizes,  capacities,  and  types  of  planes 
or  engines,  or  the  sorts  of  ordnance,  armament,  and  aeronauti- 
cal appliances  demanded  by  the  exacting  service  in  which  our 
young  birdmen  were  soon  to  engage.  Even  the  airplanes  on 
order  in  April,  1917  (over  350  of  them),  proved  to  be  of  such 
antiquated  design  that  the  manufacturers,  in  the  light  of  their 
increased  knowledge  of  war  requirements  a  few  months  later, 
asked  to  be  released  from  their  contracts. 

Nor  was  there  in  the  United  States  any  industry  so  closely 
allied  to  airplane  manufacture  that  its  engineers  and  designers 
could  turn  from  one  to  the  other  and  take  their  places  at  once 
abreast  of  the  progress  in  Europe.  There  was  in  the  United 
States  little  or  no  engineering  talent  competent  to  design  fully 
equipped  military  aircraft  which  could  compete  with  Europe. 
Our  aircraft  producers  must  go  to  France  and  England  and 
Italy  and  ground  themselves  in  the  principles  of  a  new  science 
before  they  could  attempt  to  produce  their  own  designs,  before 
they  could  even  be  safe  in  selecting  European  designs  for 
reproduction  in  this  country. 

Sketchy  and  incomplete  as  was  our  knowledge  of  airplane 
construction,  it  was  no  more  hazy  than  our  notion  of  how 
many  planes  to  build.  What  would  constitute  overwhelming 


AIRPLANES  327 

superiority  in  the  air?  As  an  indication  of  the  rapidity  with 
which  history  has  moved,  it  may  be  stated  that  in  January  and 
February  of  1917  the  Signal  Corps  discussed  the  feasibility  of 
building  1,000  planes  in  a  year  of  construction.  This  seems  to 
us  now  a  ridiculously  low  figure  to  propose  as  representative 
of  American  resources,  but  in  the  early  weeks  of  1917  the 
construction  of  a  thousand  airplanes  appeared  to  be  a  formi- 
dable undertaking.  In  March,  when  war  was  inevitable,  we 
raised  this  number  to  2,500  planes  within  twelve  months;  in 
April,  when  war  was  declared,  we  raised  it  again  to  3,700. 

But  as  soon  as  we  were  in  the  war,  and  as  soon  as,  through 
the  exchange  of  military  missions,  our  designers  were  taken 
into  the  confidence  of  the  aviation  branches  of  the  French, 
British,  and  Italian  armies  and  shown  for  the  first  time  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  development  of  the  war  plane,  includ- 
ing both  what  had  been  done  in  the  past  and  what  might  be 
expected  in  the  future,  then  our  Joint  Army  and  Navy  Tech- 
nical Board,  in  the  last  week  of  May  and  the  early  part  of 
June,  1917,  recommended  to  the  secretaries  of  War  and  the 
Navy  that  a  building  program  be  started  at  once  to  produce 
the  stupendous  total  of  19,775  planes  for  our  own  use  and 
3,000  additional  ones  if  we  were  to  train  foreign  aviators,  or 
approximately  22,000  in  all.  This  was  a  program  worthy  of 
America's  industrial  greatness.  Of  these  proposed  planes, 
7,050  were  for  training  our  flyers,  725  for  the  defense  of  the 
United  States  and  insular  possessions,  and  12,000  for  active 
service  in  France.  Such  was  the  task  assigned  to  an  industry 
that,  in  the  previous  twelve  months,  had  manufactured  less 
than  800  airplanes,  and  those  being  principally  training  planes 
for  foreign  governments. 

The  expanding  national  ambition  for  an  aircraft  industry 
was  also  shown  by  the  mounting  money  grants.  On  May  12 
Congress  voted  $10,800,000  for  military  aeronautics.  On  June 
15  an  appropriation  of  $43,450,000  was  voted  for  the  same 
purpose.  Finally,  on  July  24,  1917,  the  President  signed  the 
bill  appropriating  $640,000,000  for  aircraft.  This  was  the 
largest  appropriation  ever  made  by  Congress  for  one  specific 


328  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

purpose,  and  the  bill  was  put  through  both  houses  within  the 
period  of  a  little  more  than  a  week. 

The  jfigure  22,000,  however,  scarcely  indicates  the  size  of 
this  undertaking,  as  we  were  to  realize  before  long.  We  little 
understood  the  infinite  complications  of  fully  equipping  battle 
planes.  Lacking  that  invaluable  experience  which  Europe  had 
attained  in  three  years  of  production,  we  had  no  practical  reali- 
zation of  the  fact  that  for  each  100  airplanes  an  equivalent 
of  80  additional  airplanes  must  be  provided  in  spare  parts.  In 
other  words,  an  effective  fighting  plane  delivered  in  France  is 
not  one  plane,  but  it  is  one  plane  and  eight-tenths  of  another; 
which  means  that  the  program  adopted  in  June,  1917,  called 
for  the  production  in  twelve  months  of,  not  22,000  airplanes, 
but  rather  of  the  equivalent  of  40,000. 

Let  us  set  down  the  inventory  of  the  Government's  own 
resources  for  handling  this  project.  The  American  Air  Service, 
then  part  of  the  Signal  Corps,  had  had  a  struggling  and  meager 
existence,  working  with  the  old  pusher  type  of  planes  until, 
in  1914,  an  appropriation  of  $250,000  was  made  available  for 
the  purchase  of  new  airplanes  and  equipment.  Shortly  after 
this  appropriation  was  granted,  five  officers  were  sent  to  the 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  for  a  course  in  aero- 
nautics. When  the  war  broke  out  in  Europe  in  August,  1914, 
these  men  constituted  the  entire  technically  trained  personnel 
of  the  Air  Service  of  the  United  States.  By  April  6,  1917,  we 
had  sixty-five  officers  in  the  Air  Service,  an  enlisted  and 
civilian  personnel  of  1,330,  two  flying  fields,  and  a  few  service- 
able planes  of  the  training  type.  Compare  this  equipment  with 
that  of  Germany,  France,  and  England  at  the  time  they  went 
to  war.  Germany  is  believed  to  have  had  nearly  1,000  airplanes 
in  August,  1914;  France  had  about  300;  and  England  barely 
250.  America's  224,  delivered  up  to  April  6,  1917,  were  nearly 
all  obsolete  in  type,  compared  with  the  machines  then  in 
effective  service  in  France. 

No  sooner  had  the  United  States  embarked  upon  the  war 
than  the  agents  of  the  European  manufacturers  of  airplanes 
descended  upon  the  Aircraft  Board  in  swarms.  France,  Eng- 


AIRPLANES  329 

land,  and  Italy  had  all  adopted  the  policy  of  depending  upon 
the  private  development  of  designs  for  their  supplies  of  air- 
planes, with  the  result  that  the  builders  of  each  country  had 
produced  a  number  of  successful  types  of  flying  machines  and 
an  even  greater  number  of  types  of  engines.  On  the  assumption 
that  the  United  States  would  adopt  certain  of  these  types  and 
build  them  here,  the  agents  for  the  Sopwiths,  the  Capronis,  the 
Handley-Pages,  and  many  others  proceeded  to  demonstrate 
the  particular  excellences  of  their  various  articles.  Out  of  this 
confusion  of  counsel  stood  one  pertinent  fact  in  relief — the 
United  States  would  have  to  pay  considerable  royalties  for 
the  use  of  any  of  these  European  devices. 

As  to  the  relative  merits  of  types  and  designs,  it  was  soon 
clear  that  no  intelligent  decision  could  be  reached  in  Washing- 
ton or  anywhere  but  in  Europe.  Because  of  our  distance  from 
the  front  and  the  length  of  time  required  to  put  the  American 
industrial  machine  into  operation  on  a  large  scale,  it  was  neces- 
sary that  we  understand  in  advance  the  types  and  tendencies  in 
aircraft  construction,  so  that  we  could  anticipate  aircraft  devel- 
opment in  such  special  designs  as  we  might  adopt.  Otherwise,  if 
we  accepted  the  types  of  equipment  then  in  use  in  Europe,  by 
the  time  we  had  begun  producing  on  a  large  scale,  a  year  or  so 
later,  we  should  find  our  output  obsolete,  so  rapidly  was  the 
science  of  aircraft  moving.  In  June,  therefore,  the  United 
States  sent  to  Europe  a  commission  of  six  civilian  and  military 
experts,  headed  by  Major  R.  C.  Boiling,  part  of  whose  duties 
was  to  advise  the  American  War  Department  as  to  what  types 
of  planes  and  engines  and  other  air  equipment  we  should  pre- 
pare to  manufacture.  Also,  in  April  the  Chief  of  the  Signal 
Corps  had  sent  cables  to  England,  France,  and  Italy,  request- 
ing that  aviation  experts  be  sent  at  once  to  this  country;  and 
shortly  after  this  we  dispatched  to  Europe  more  than  a  hun- 
dred skilled  mechanics  to  work  in  the  foreign  engine  and  air- 
plane plants  and  acquire  the  training  that  would  make  them 
the  nucleus  of  a  large  mechanical  force  for  aircraft  production 
in  this  country. 

But  while  these  early  educational  activities  were  in  progress, 


330  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

much  could  be  done  at  home  that  need  not  await  the  forthcom- 
ing reports  from  the  Boiling  mission.  We  had  in  this  country, 
for  instance,  several  types  of  planes  and  engines  suitable  for 
the  training  fields  which  were  even  then  being  established. 
The  Signal  Corps,  therefore,  bent  its  energies  upon  the  manu- 
facture of  training  equipment,  leaving  the  development  of 
battle  aircraft  to  come  after  we  should  know  more  about  that 
subject. 

It  was  evident  that  we  could  not  equip  an  airplane  industry 
and  furnish  machines  to  our  fliers  abroad  before  the  summer  of 
1918;  and  accordingly  we  arranged  with  France  for  this  equip- 
ment by  placing  orders  with  French  factories  for  5,875  planes 
of  regular  French  design.  These  were  all  to  be  delivered  by 
July  1,  1918.  In  the  arrangement  with  the  French  factories  we 
agreed  to  supply  from  the  United  States  a  great  deal  of  the 
raw  materials  for  these  machines,  and  the  contract  for  fur- 
nishing these  supplies  was  given  to  J.  G.  White  &  Company 
of  New  York  City.  This  concern  did  a  creditable  job,  shipping 
about  5,000,000  feet  of  lumber,  much  necessary  machinery, 
and  a  multitude  of  items  required  in  the  fabrication  of  air- 
planes, all  to  the  value  of  $10,000,000.  The  total  weight  of 
the  shipments  on  this  contract  was  something  like  23,000  tons, 
this  figure  including  7,500  tons  of  lumber.  The  other  tonnage 
consisted  of  tubing  of  steel,  brass,  copper,  and  aluminum; 
sheets  of  steel,  copper,  lead,  and  aluminum ;  and  bar  steel,  tool 
steel,  structural  steel,  ball  bearings,  crank  shafts,  tumbuckles, 
radiator  tubes,  wire,  cable,  bolts,  nuts,  screws,  nails,  fiber  cloth, 
felt,  and  rubber.  All  this  was  in  addition  to  approximately 
1,000  machine  tools,  such  as  motors,  lathes,  and  grinders. 

The  orders  for  French  planes  were  divided  as  follows:  725 
Nieuport  training  planes,  150  Spad  training  planes,  1,500 
Breguet  service  planes,  2,000  Spad  service  planes,  and  1,500 
New  Spad  or  Nieuport  service  planes.  The  decision  between 
the  New  Spad  and  Nieuport  service  planes  was  to  be  made  as 
soon  as  the  New  Spad  could  be  tested.  These  planes  were  to 
be  delivered  in  specified  monthly  quantities,  increasing  in  num- 
ber until  the  total  of  1,360  planes  should  be  placed  in  our 


AIRPLANES  331 

hands  during  the  month  of  March,  1918,  alone.  The  contracts 
were  to  be  concluded  in  June  with  the  delivery  of  the  final 
1,115  planes.  We  also  contracted  for  the  manufacture  of  8,500 
service  engines  of  the  Renault,  Hispano,  and  Gnome  makes, 
all  of  these  to  be  delivered  by  the  end  of  June. 

When  the  armistice  ended  the  fighting,  we  had  produced  a 
total  of  1 1,754  airplanes  in  America,  together  with  most  of  the 
necessary  spare  parts  for  about  one-third  of  them.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  American  airplanes  built  in  the  war  period 
were  of  the  training  rather  than  the  service,  or  battle,  type; 
for  it  was  necessary  that  we  have  a  large  equipment  of  training 
planes  in  order  to  prepare  the  swiftly  expanding  personnel  of 
the  Air  Service  for  its  future  activity  at  the  front.  The  nations 
associated  with  us  in  the  war,  however,  had  produced  their 
training  equipment  in  advance  of  our  participation  as  a  bellig- 
erent, and  at  the  time  we  entered  the  war  the  French,  British, 
and  Italians  were  producing  only  enough  training  planes  to 
maintain  their  training  equipment  and  were  going  in  heavily, 
with  the  rest  of  their  airplane  industries,  for  the  production  of 
service  planes. 

With  these  considerations  in  mind,  the  reader  can  make  an 
interesting  comparison  of  British  and  American  plane  produc- 
tion, the  British  figures  being  for  both  the  British  Army  and 
the  British  Navy,  whereas  the  American  figures  are  for  the 
American  Army  alone.  In  the  following  table  of  comparison 
the  British  figures  are  based  on  the  Lockhart  Report  of 
November  1,  1918: 


332  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 


Comparative  Rate  of  Airplane  Production — British  and 
United  States  Army 

British  United 

Army  and  States 

Calendar  year  Navy  Army 


1915,  January 

to  December  31      . 

2,040 

20 

1916,  January 

to  December  31 

6,000 

'83 

1917,  January 

to  December  31 

14,400 

'  1,807 

1918,  January 

to  December  31 

.     30,000 

'11,950 

^  Experimental. 

"  1,476  built  in  last  seven  months  only. 

^Inclusive  of  135  secured  by  Engineering  Department.  The  American 
total  would  have  been  12,837  if  the  October  production  had  continued 
through  November  and  December. 


Broadly  interpreted,  and  without  reference  to  types  of 
planes  produced,  these  figures  mean  that  the  United  States,  in 
her  second  year  of  the  war,  produced  for  the  American  Army 
alone  almost  as  many  airplanes  as  Great  Britain  built  in  her 
third  year  of  the  war  for  both  her  army  and  navy.  In  October, 
1918,  factories  in  this  country  turned  out  1,651  planes,  which, 
without  allowing  for  the  monthly  expansion  in  the  production, 
was  at  the  rate  of  20,000  planes  a  year.  Assuming  no  increase 
in  the  October  rate  of  production,  we  should  have  attained  the 
22,000  airplanes  in  twenty-three  months  after  July  1,  1917, 
the  date  on  which  the  production  effort  may  be  said  to  have 
started.  Our  production  of  fighting  planes  in  the  war  period 
was  3,328. 

On  the  day  the  armistice  was  signed  we  had  received  from 
all  sources  16,952  planes.  Of  these,  5,198  had  been  produced 
for  us  by  the  Allies.  We  had  48  flying  fields,  20,568  air  service 
officers,  and  174,456  enlisted  men  and  civilian  personnel. 
These  figures  do  not  mean  that  we  had  more  than  17,000 
planes  on  hand  at  that  time,  because  the  mortality  in  airplanes, 
from  both  accidents  and  ordinary  wear  and  tear,  is  high. 


Photo  from  Air  Service 

MANUFACTURING  AIRPLANE  WINGS 


Photo  from  Air  Service 

IN  THE  DAYTON-WRIGHT  AIRPLANE  FACTORY 


Photo  from  .in  Sen-ice 

WINGS  FOR  DE  HAVILAND  PLANES 


Photo  from  Curtiis  Aeroplane  13  Motor  Corporation 

PANEL  DEPARTMENT  IN  GREAT  AIRPLANE  FACTORY 


AIRPLANES  333 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  MATERIAL 

Once  we  had  started  out  on  this  enterprise,  we  discovered 
that  the  production  of  airplanes  was  something  more  than  a 
merely  manufacturing  job.  With  almost  any  other  article,  we 
might  have  made  our  designs,  given  orders  to  the  factories,  and 
rested  in  the  security  that  in  due  time  the  articles  would  be 
forthcoming.  But  with  airplanes  we  had  to  create  the  industry; 
and  this  meant  not  only  the  equipping  of  factories,  but  the 
procurement  and  sometimes  the  actual  production  of  the  raw 
materials. 

For  instance,  the  ideal  lubricant  for  the  airplane  motor  is 
castor  oil.  When  we  discovered  that  the  supply  of  castor  oil 
was  not  nearly  sufficient  for  our  future  needs,  the  Government 
secured  from  Asia  a  large  quantity  of  castor  beans — enough  to 
seed  more  than  100,000  acres  in  this  country  and  thus  to  pro- 
vide for  the  future  lubrication  for  our  motors.  This  actual  crea- 
tion of  raw  materials  was  conducted  on  a  much  larger  scale  for 
certain  other  commodities  used  in  airplane  construction,  par- 
ticularly in  the  production  of  lumber  and  cotton  and  in  the 
manufacture  of  the  chemicals  for  the  "dope"  with  which  the 
airplane  wings  are  covered  and  made  airtight. 

An  airplane  must  have  wings  and  an  engine,  with  a  propeller 
to  make  it  go;  and,  like  a  bird,  it  must  have  a  tail  to  make  it 
fly  straight  and  a  body  (fuselage)  to  hold  all  together.  Part 
of  the  tail  (the  rudder)  moves  sidewise  and  steers  the  airplane 
from  left  to  right;  part  (the  elevators)  moves  up  and  down 
and  makes  the  airplane  go  up  or  down;  and  parts  of  the  wings 
(the  ailerons)  move  up  and  down  and  make  the  airplane  tip 
from  side  to  side.  All  these  things  must  be  connected  to  the 
controls  in  the  hands  of  the  pilot.  The  front  edges  of  the  wings 
are  raised  above  the  line  of  flight;  and  when  the  propeller 
driven  by  the  engine  forces  the  wings  through  the  air,  the 
airplane  is  lifted  and  flies. 

All  the  airplanes  built  for  the  United  States  during  the  war 
were  tractor  biplanes.  In  a  plane  of  the  tractor  type  the  pro- 
peller is  in  front  and  pulls  the  machine.  The  biplane  is  so 
called  because  it  has  two  planes  or  wings,  one  above  the  other. 


334  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Of  all  types  the  biplane  has  been  the  most  largely  used  in  war, 
for  two  reasons:  first,  the  struts  and  wires  between  the  planes 
form  a  truss  structure,  and  this  gives  the  needed  strength; 
secondly,  there  is  less  danger  of  enemy  bullets  wrecking  a 
biplane  in  the  air,  because  its  wing  support  is  greater  than 
that  of  the  monoplane,  or  single-winged,  machine. 

Since  the  airplane  can  lift  only  a  limited  weight,  every  part 
of  the  mechanism  must  be  as  light  as  possible.  An  airplane 
engine  weighs  from  two  to  three  pounds  to  the  horsepower, 
whereas  an  automobile  motor  weighs  from  eight  to  ten.  The 
skeleton  of  the  airplane  is  made  of  wood,  mostly  spruce,  with 
sheet-steel  fittings  to  join  the  wood  parts  together,  and  steel 
wires  and  rods  to  make  every  part  a  truss.  This  skeleton  is 
covered  with  cloth,  and  the  cloth  is  stretched  and  made  smooth 
by  dope. 

Wood,  sheet  steel,  wire,  cloth,  varnish — these  are  the  prin- 
cipal components  of  an  airplane.  As  raw  materials,  they  all 
seem  easy  to  obtain  in  America.  And  so  they  are,  in  peace 
times  and  for  ordinary  purposes.  But  never  before  had  quality 
been  so  essential  in  an  American  industry,  from  the  raw  mate- 
rial up  to  the  finished  product — quality  in  the  materials  used, 
and  quality  in  the  workmanship  which  fashions  the  parts. 
Moreover,  we  were  forced  to  produce  in  quantities  bounded 
only  by  our  own  physical  limitations;  and  these  quantities 
must  include  not  only  the  materials  for  our  own  air  program, 
but  also  some  of  the  principal  raw  materials  used  by  the  air- 
plane builders  in  France  and  England — specifically,  all  the 
spruce  which  the  Allies  would  require  and,  later,  much  of 
the  wing  fabric  and  dope  for  their  machines.  It  was  early 
evident  to  us  that  we  had  on  our  hands  a  problem  in  spruce 
production  which  the  Government  itself  must  solve,  if  the  air- 
plane undertaking  were  not  to  fail  at  the  outset.  When  we 
entered  the  war,  linen  was  exclusively  used  for  the  covering 
of  wings;  and  it  transpired  almost  immediately  that  the 
United  Kingdom  was  practically  the  sole  source  of  linen.  But 
the  Irish  looms  could  not  begin  to  furnish  us  with  our  needs 
for  this  commodity.  Later  on  there  arose  the  question  of  sup- 


AIRPLANES  335 

plying  dope  and  castor  oil.  Finally,  during  the  last  months  of 
the  war,  it  became  necessary  for  us  to  follow  up  the  production 
of  all  classes  of  our  raw  material,  particularly  by  working  out 
a  suitable  supply  of  steel  tubing.  But  our  great  creative  efforts 
in  raw  materials  were  confined  to  spruce,  fabric,  and  dope. 

The  lumber  problem  involved  vast  industrial  and  technical 
questions.  We  had  to  conduct  a  campaign  of  education  in  the 
knowledge  of  aircraft  requirements;  a  campaign  that  reached 
from  the  loggers  in  the  woods  to  the  sawmill  men,  to  the  cut- 
up  plants,  and  then  followed  through  the  processes  of  drying 
and  sawing  to  the  proper  utilization  of  the  lumber  in  the  air- 
craft factories.  In  working  out  these  problems,  though  we  drew 
heavily  upon  the  experience  of  Europe,  we  added  our  own 
technical  skill  to  the  solution.  The  Signal  Corps  was  assisted 
by  the  Forest  Products  Laboratory  at  Madison,  Wisconsin,  and 
by  the  wood  section  of  the  inspection  department  of  the  Bureau 
of  Aircraft  Production.  The  United  States  Forest  Service  con- 
tributed its  share  of  technical  knowledge.  At  the  end  of  the 
war  we  considered  that  our  practice  in  the  handling  of  aircraft 
lumber  was  superior  to  that  of  either  France  or  England. 

THE  SPRUCE  PROBLEM 

Each  airplane  uses  two  distinct  sorts  of  wood — first,  the 
spruce  or  similar  lumber  for  the  wing  beams  or  other  plane 
parts;  secondly,  mahogany,  walnut,  or  some  other  hardwood 
for  the  propeller.  The  army  production  authorities  were  in- 
volved in  securing  both  kinds  of  lumber,  and  also  in  educating 
manufacturers  to  handle  it  properly. 

In  an  ordinar)^  biplane  there  are  two  beams  for  each  lateral 
wing,  eight  beams  to  the  plane.  These  form  the  basis  of 
strength  for  the  wings.  Because  of  the  heavy  stresses  put  upon 
the  airplanes  by  battle  conditions,  only  the  most  perfect  and 
straight-grained  wood  is  suitable  for  these  beams.  All  cross- 
grained  or  spiral-grained  material,  or  material  too  coarse  in 
structure,  is  useless. 

Spruce  is  the  best  of  all  woods  for  wing  beams.  Our  problem 
was  to  supply  lumber  enough  for  the  wing  beams,  disregard- 


336  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ing  the  other  parts;  for  all  other  wood  used  in  the  manufac- 
ture of  planes  could  be  secured  from  cuttings  from  the  wing- 
beam  stock.  At  the  beginning  we  built  each  beam  out  of  one 
piece  of  wood;  and  this  meant  that  the  lumber  must  be  extra 
long,  thick,  and  perfect.  Until  we  learned  how  to  cut  the 
spruce  economically  we  found  that  only  a  small  portion  of  the 
lumber  actually  logged  was  satisfactory  for  airplanes.  A  bi- 
plane of  average  size  uses  less  than  500  feet  of  lumber.  In  the 
hands  of  skilled  cutters  this  quantity  can  be  worked  out  of 
1,000  feet  of  rough  lumber.  But  in  the  earlier  days  of  the 
undertaking  as  high  as  5,000  feet  of  spruce  were  used  up  for 
a  single  plane,  because  of  imperfections  in  the  lumber,  lack  of 
proper  inspection  at  the  mills,  and  faulty  handling  in  transit 
and  in  the  factories.  We  also  used  certain  species  of  fir  in 
building  training  planes.  This  wood,  like  spruce,  is  light, 
tough,  and  strong.  The  only  great  source  of  supply  of  these 
woods  was  in  the  Pacific  Northwest,  although  there  was  a 
modest  quantity  of  suitable  timber  in  West  Virginia,  North 
Carolina,  and  New  England. 

At  first  we  expected  to  rely  upon  the  unaided  efforts  of  the 
lumber  producers.  But  labor  difficulties  almost  immediately 
arose  in  the  Northwest,  and  they  hindered  the  production  of 
lumber.  The  effort,  too,  was  beset  with  physical  difficulties; 
for  the  large  virgin  stands  of  spruce  occurred  only  at  intervals 
and  often  at  long  distances  from  the  railroads.  By  the  middle 
of  October,  1917,  it  became  evident  that  the  northwestern 
lumber  industry,  unaided,  could  not  deliver  the  spruce  and 
fir;  and  the  Chief  of  Staff  of  the  Army  formed  a  military 
organization  to  handle  the  situation.  On  November  6,  1917, 
Colonel  Brice  P.  Disque  took  command  of  the  Spruce  Produc- 
tion Division  of  the  Signal  Corps,  this  organization  later  being 
transferred  to  the  Bureau  of  Aircraft  Production.  When  Colo- 
nel Disque  went  into  the  Northwest  he  found  the  industry  in 
a  chaotic  condition.  The  I.  W.  W.  was  demoralizing  the  labor 
forces.  The  mills  did  not  have  the  machinery  to  cut  the 
straight-grained  lumber  needed,  and  their  timber  experts  were 
not  sufficiently  skilled  in  the  selection  and  judging  of  logs 


AIRPLANES  337 

to  secure  the  maximum  footage.  The  whole  industry  was 
organized  for  quantity  production,  and  it  had  no  interest  in  the 
high  quality  requirements  insisted  upon  by  the  Government. 

One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  military  organization  was  to 
organize  a  society  called  the  Loyal  Legion  of  Loggers  and 
Lumbermen,  the  "L.  L.  L.  L.,"  to  offset  the  L  W.  W.  propa- 
ganda, on  a  platform  of  no  strikes,  fair  wages,  and  the  con- 
scientious production  of  the  Government's  requirements.  On 
March  i,  1918,  75,000  lumbermen  and  operators  agreed  with- 
out reservation  to  give  Colonel  Disque  power  to  decide  all 
labor  disputes.  The  specifications  for  logs  were  then  standard- 
ized and  modified  as  far  as  was  practicable  in  the  direction  of 
meeting  the  manufacturers'  needs.  We  arranged  financial 
assistance,  that  they  might  equip  their  mills  with  the  proper 
machinery.  We  instituted  a  system  of  instruction  for  the  per- 
sonnel. Finally,  the  Government  fixed  a  price  for  aircraft 
spruce  that  stabilized  the  industry  and  provided  against  delays 
from  labor  disputes. 

While  these  basic  reforms  were  being  instituted,  our  organi- 
zation had  energetically  taken  up  the  physical  problems  re- 
lating to  the  work.  We  surveyed  the  existing  stands  of  spruce 
timber,  built  railroads  connecting  them  with  the  mills,  and 
projected  other  railroads  far  into  the  future.  We  began  and 
encouraged  logging  by  farmers  in  small  operations.  By  these 
and  other  methods,  the  efficiency  of  this  production  effort 
gradually  increased.  In  all,  we  took  180,000,000  feet  of  air- 
craft lumber  out  of  the  northwestern  forests.  To  the  Allies 
went  120,000,000  feet;  to  the  United  States  Army  and  Navy, 
60,000,000  feet. 

Even  when  we  had  resolved  the  difficulties  in  the  forests, 
only  part  of  the  problem  had  been  met.  Next  came  the  intricate 
industrial  question  of  how  to  prepare  this  lumber  for  aircraft 
use.  We  possessed  little  knowledge  of  the  proper  methods  of 
seasoning  it.  The  vast  majority  of  woodworking  plants  in  this 
country,  such  as  those  for  furniture  and  pianos,  had  always 
dried  lumber  to  the  end  that  it  might  keep  its  shape.  We  were 
now  faced  with  the  technical  question  of  drying  lumber  so  as 


338  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

to  preserve  its  strength.  The  Forest  Products  Laboratory 
worked  out  a  scientific  method  for  this  sort  of  seasoning. 
Incidentally,  they  discovered  that  ordinary  commercial  drying 
had  seldom  been  carried  on  scientifically.  The  country  received 
a  lasting  benefit  from  this  instruction,  carried  broadcast  over 
the  woodworking  industries. 

In  the  progress  of  our  wood  studies  we  discovered  a  method 
of  splicing  short  lengths  of  spruce  to  make  wing  beams;  and 
in  the  later  months  of  the  production  we  used  these  spliced 
beams  exclusively,  at  a  great  saving  in  raw  materials.  In 
another  year  of  warfare  the  use  of  laminated  beams  would 
probably  have  become  universal. 

COTTON  FABRIC  AND  DOPE 

The  flying  surfaces  of  an  airplane  are  made  by  stretching  cloth 
over  the  frames.  When  we  came  into  war  it  was  supposed  that 
linen  was  the  only  common  fabric  with  sufficient  strength  for 
this  use,  and  linen  was  almost  exclusively  used  by  the  airplane 
builders,  although  Italian  manufacturers  were  trying  to  de- 
velop a  cotton  fabric.  Of  the  three  principal  sources  of  flax, 
Belgium  had  been  cut  off  from  the  Allies,  Russia  was  isolated 
entirely  after  the  revolution  there,  and  Ireland  was  left  as  the 
sole  available  land  from  which  flax  for  airplane  linen  could 
be  obtained.  As  late  as  August,  1917,  England  assured  us  that 
she  could  supply  all  the  linen  that  would  be  needed.  It  rapidly 
became  evident  that  England  had  underestimated  our  require- 
ments. An  average  airplane  requires  250  yards  of  fabric;  some 
of  the  large  machines  need  more  than  500  yards.  And  these 
requirements  do  not  take  into  consideration  the  spare  wings 
which  must  be  supplied  with  each  airplane.  This  meant  a 
demand  for  millions  of  yards  put  upon  the  Irish  supply,  which 
had  no  such  surplus  above  Allied  needs. 

For  some  time  before  April  6,  1917,  the  Bureau  of  Stand- 
ards at  Washington  had  been  experimenting  with  cotton  air- 
plane cloths.  Out  of  the  large  variety  of  fabrics  tested,  several 
promising  experimental  cloths  were  produced.  The  chief  ob- 
jection to  cotton  was  that  the  dope  which  gave  satisfactory 


AIRPLANES  339 

results  on  linen  failed  to  work  with  uniformity  on  cotton. 
Therefore  it  became  clear  that,  if  we  were  to  use  cotton  fabric, 
we  should  also  have  to  invent  a  new  dope. 

Two  grades  of  cotton  airplane  cloth  were  finally  evolved — 
A,  which  had  a  minimum  strength  of  eighty  pounds  to  the 
inch,  and  B,  with  a  minimum  strength  of  seventy-five  pounds 
to  the  inch.  Grade  A  was  later  universally  adopted.  This  cloth 
weighed  four  and  one-half  ounces  to  the  square  yard.  We 
placed  our  first  orders  for  cotton  airplane  fabric  in  September, 
1917, — orders  for  20,000  yards, — and  from  that  time  on,  the 
use  of  linen  decreased.  By  March  of  1918  the  production  of 
cotton  airplane  cloth  had  reached  400,000  yards  a  month.  In 
May  the  production  was  about  900,000  yards;  and  when  the 
war  ended,  this  material  was  being  turned  out  at  the  rate  of 
1,200,000  yards  a  month.  Starting  with  a  few  machines,  our 
cotton  mills  had  gradually  brought  2,600  looms  into  the  enter- 
prise, each  loom  turning  out  about  120  yards  of  cloth  in  a 
week.  A  total  of  10,248,355  yards  of  cotton  fabric  was  woven 
and  delivered  to  the  Government — over  5,800  miles  of  it, 
nearly  enough  to  reach  from  California  to  France.  The  use  of 
cotton  fabric  so  expanded  that  in  August,  1918,  we  discon- 
tinued the  importations  of  linen  altogether.  There  was,  how- 
ever, danger  that  we  should  be  limited  in  our  output  of  cotton 
fabric  if  there  were  any  curtailment  in  the  supply  of  the  long- 
staple  sea-island  and  Egyptian  cotton  of  which  this  cloth  is 
made.  To  make  sure  that  there  should  be  no  shortage  of  this 
material,  the  Signal  Corps  went  into  the  market  in  November, 
1917,  and  purchased  15,000  bales  of  sea-island  cotton.  This 
gave  us  at  all  times  an  adequate  reserve  of  raw  material  for  the 
new  fabric. 

Thus,  just  as  the  airplane  situation  had  been  saved  by  the 
prompt  action  of  the  Signal  Corps  in  organizing  and  training 
the  spruce  industry,  so  again  the  uninterrupted  expansion  of 
the  Allied  aviation  program  was  made  possible  by  the  decision 
to  produce  cotton  fabric  and  by  prompt  action  in  cornering 
the  supply.  Cotton  proved  to  be  not  only  an  admirable  sub- 
stitute for  linen,  but  actually  a  better  fabric.  No  matter  how 


340  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

abundant  the  supply  of  flax  may  be,  it  is  unlikely  that  linen 
will  ever  again  be  used  in  large  quantities  for  the  manufacture 
of  airplane  wings. 

Not  only  must  the  wings  of  an  airplane  be  covered  with 
fabric,  but  the  fabric  must  be  filled  with  dope,  which  is  a  sort 
of  varnish.  The  function  of  the  dope  is  to  stretch  the  cloth 
tight  and  to  create  on  it  a  smooth  surface.  After  the  dope  is  on 
the  fabric  the  surface  is  protected  further  by  a  coat  of  ordinary 
spar  varnish. 

We  found  in  the  market  two  sorts  of  dope  which  were  being 
furnished  to  airplane  builders  of  all  countries  by  various  chemi- 
cal and  varnish  manufacturers.  One,  nitrate  in  composition, 
was  made  from  nitrocellulose  and  certain  wood-chemical  sol- 
vents, including  alcohol.  This  produced  a  surface  similar  to 
that  of  a  photographic  film.  The  other  kind  of  dope  had  an 
acetate  base  and  was  made  from  cellulose-acetate  and  such 
wood-chemical  solvents  as  acetone.  The  nitrate  dope  burned 
rapidly  when  ignited,  but  the  acetate  type  was  slow-burning. 
Therefore  the  nitrate  dope  would  be  fairly  satisfactory  in 
training  planes  not  subject  to  attack  by  enemy  incendiary 
bullets,  but  in  the  fighting  planes  the  slow-burning  acetate 
dope  was  a  vital  necessity.  Up  to  the  time  of  our  participation 
in  the  war,  the  dopes  produced  in  the  United  States  were  prin- 
cipally nitrate.  It  was  evident  that,  to  avoid  the  danger  of  fire, 
we  must  make  our  new  dope  acetate  in  composition.  But  for 
this  we  should  require  great  quantities  of  acetone  and  acetate 
chemicals;  and  a  careful  canvass  of  the  supply  of  such  ingre- 
dients showed  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  us  to  obtain 
these  in  anything  like  the  necessary  quantities  without  devel- 
oping quite  new  sources  of  production. 

Already  acetone  and  its  kindred  products  were  being  ab- 
sorbed in  large  quantities  by  the  war  production  of  the  Allies. 
The  British  Army  was  absolutely  dependent  upon  cordite  as  a 
high  explosive.  Acetone  is  the  chemical  basis  of  cordite;  and 
therefore  the  British  Army  looked  with  great  concern  upon 
the  added  demand  which  the  American  aviation  program  pro- 
posed to  put  upon  the  acetone  supply.  We  estimated  that  in 


Photo  from  Ait  Service 


SEAMING  FABRIC  FOR  WINGS 


Photc  from   Air  Service 

ASSEMBLING  ENGINES  IN  FUSELAGES 


AIRPLANES  341 

1918  we  should  require  25,000  tons  of  acetone  in  our  dope 
production.  The  British  war  mission  in  this  country  sub- 
mitted figures  showing  that  the  war  demands  of  the  Allies, 
together  with  their  necessary  domestic  requirements,  would  in 
themselves  be  greater  than  the  total  world  production  of 
acetone. 

There  was  nothing,  then,  for  us  to  do  but  to  increase  the 
source  of  supply  of  these  necessary  acetate  compounds;  and 
this  was  done  by  encouraging,  financially  and  otherwise,  the 
establishment  of  ten  large  chemical  plants,  located  in  as  many 
towns  and  cities,  as  follows:  Collinwood,  Tennessee;  Tyrone, 
Pennsylvania;  Mechanicsville,  New  York;  Shawenegan  Falls, 
Canada;  Kingsport,  Tennessee;  Lyles,  Tennessee;  Fremont, 
Missouri;  Sutton,  West  Virginia;  Shelby,  Alabama;  and 
Terre  Haute,  Indiana. 

But  it  was  evident  that  before  these  plants  could  be  com- 
pleted the  airplane  builders  would  be  needing  dope;  and  there- 
fore steps  were  taken  to  keep  things  going  in  all  the  principal 
countries  fighting  Germany  until  the  acetate  shortage  could 
be  relieved.  In  December,  1917,  we  commandeered  all  the 
existing  American  supply  of  acetate  of  lime,  the  base  from 
which  acetone  and  kindred  products  are  made.  Then  we  entered 
into  a  pool  with  the  Allied  governments  to  ration  these  sup- 
plies of  chemicals,  pending  the  era  of  plenty.  Our  agency  in 
this  pool  was  the  wood-chemical  section  of  the  War  Industries 
Board;  the  Allies  placed  their  demands  in  the  hands  of  the 
British  war  mission.  These  two  boards  allocated  the  acetate 
chemicals  among  the  different  countries  according  to  the 
urgency  of  their  demands.  Since  it  was  evident  there  might  be 
financial  losses  incurred  as  the  result  of  the  commandeering 
order  or  in  the  project  of  the  new  government  chemical  plants, 
the  British  war  mission  agreed  that  any  deficit  should  be  shared 
equally  by  the  American  and  British  governments.  It  was  also 
agreed  that  we  should  not  have  any  advantage  in  prices  paid 
for  acetates  of  American  origin.  Under  this  arrangement  we 
were  able  to  produce  1,324,356  gallons  of  fabric  dope  during 
the  period  of  hostilities,  without  upsetting  any  of  the  European 


342  THE  ARiMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

war-production  projects.  Had  the  war  continued,  the  output 
from  the  ten  chemical  plants  in  which  the  Government  was  a 
partner  would  have  cared  for  all  American  and  Allied  require- 
ments, allowing  the  production  of  private  plants  to  go  exclu- 
sively for  the  ordinary  commercial  purposes. 

THE  TRAINING  PLANES 

The  actual  building  of  the  airplanes  furnished  a  striking 
example  of  the  value  of  previous  experience,  either  direct  or 
of  a  cognate  sort,  in  the  quantity  production  of  an  article. 
What  airplanes  we  had  built  in  the  United  States — and  the 
number  was  small,  being  less  than  800  in  the  twelve  months 
prior  to  April,  1917 — had  been  entirely  of  the  training  type. 
These  had  been  produced  principally  for  foreign  governments. 
But  this  slight  manufacture  gave  us  a  nucleus  of  skill  and 
equipment  that  we  were  able  to  expand  to  meet  our  own  train- 
ing needs  almost  as  rapidly  as  fields  could  be  equipped  and 
student  aviators  enlisted.  The  training-plane  program  can  be 
called  a  success,  as  the  final  production  figures  show.  Of  the 
11,754  airplanes  actually  turned  out  by  American  factories, 
8,567  were  training  machines.  This  was  close  to  the  10,000 
mark  set  as  our  ambition  in  June,  1917. 

There  are  two  types  of  training  planes — those  used  in  the 
primary  instruction  of  students  and  those  in  the  advanced 
teaching,  the  latter  approaching  the  service  planes  in  type. 
The  primary  plane  carries  the  student  and  the  instructor.  Each 
occupant  of  the  fuselage  has  before  him  a  full  set  of  controls, 
so  interconnected  that  the  instructor  at  will  can  do  the  flying 
himself,  or  correct  the  student's  false  moves,  or  allow  the 
student  to  take  complete  charge  of  the  machine.  These  primary 
planes  fly  at  the  relatively  slow  average  speed  of  seventy-five 
miles  an  hour,  and  they  require  engines  so  reliable  as  to  need 
little  attention. 

For  our  training  planes  we  adopted  the  Curtiss  JN— 4,  with 
the  Curtiss  OX-5  engine,  and,  as  a  supplementary  equipment, 
the  Standard  Aero  Corporation's  J— 1  plane,  with  the  Hall- 
Scott  "A7A"  engine.  Both  these  planes  and  both  engines  had 


AIRPLANES  343 

been  previously  manufactured  here.  The  Curtiss  equipment, 
which  was  the  standard  at  our  training  camps,  gave  complete 
satisfaction.  The  J-i  plane  was  later  withdrawn  from  use, 
partly  because  the  plane  itself  was  not  liked,  partly  because 
of  the  vibration  resulting  from  the  Hall-Scott  engine  (which 
had  only  four  cylinders),  and  partly  because  of  the  uncertainty 
of  the  engine  in  cold  weather. 

It  was  evident  that  at  the  first  we  must  turn  our  entire 
manufacturing  capacity  to  the  production  of  training  planes. 
We  should  need  these  first  in  any  event,  and  we  were  not  yet 
equipped  with  the  knowledge  to  enable  us  to  make  intelligent 
selections  of  service  types. 

In  taking  up  the  manufacturing  problem,  the  first  step  was 
to  divide  the  existing  responsible  airplane  plants  between  the 
Army  and  the  Navy,  following  the  general  rule  that  a  single 
plant  should  confine  its  work  to  the  needs  of  one  government 
department  only.  There  were,  of  course,  exceptions  to  this 
rule.  The  division  made  gave  the  Army  the  plants  of  the  Cur- 
tiss Aeroplane  &  Motor  Corporation,  Buffalo,  New  York;  the 
Standard  Aircraft  Corporation,  Elizabeth,  New  Jersey;  the 
Thomas-Morse  Aircraft  Corporation,  Ithaca,  New  York;  the 
Wright-Martin  Aircraft  Corporation,  Los  Angeles,  California; 
and  the  Sturtevant  Aeroplane  Company,  Jamaica  Plain, 
Massachusetts. 

The  factories  which  fell  to  the  Navy  were  those  of  the 
Curtiss  Aeroplane  &  Motor  Corporation,  Buffalo,  New  York; 
the  Burgess  Company,  Marblehead,  Massachusetts;  L.  W.  F. 
(Lowe,  Willard  &  Fowler)  Engineering  Company,  College 
Point,  Long  Island;  the  Aeromarine  Plane  &  Motor  Company, 
Keyport,  New  Jersey;  the  Gallaudet  Aircraft  Corporation,  New 
York;  and  the  Boeing  Airplane  Company,  Seattle,  Washing- 
ton. Of  these  concerns,  Curtiss,  Standard,  Burgess,  L.  W.  F., 
Thomas-Morse,  and  Wright-Martin  were  the  only  ones  which 
had  ever  built  more  than  ten  machines. 

These  factories  were  quite  insufficient  in  themselves  to  carry 
out  the  enterprise.  Other  airplane  plants  must  be  created.  Two 
new  factories  thereupon  sprang  into  existence  under  govern- 


344  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ment  encouragement.  The  largest  producer  of  automobile 
bodies  was  the  Fisher  Body  Company,  at  Detroit,  Michigan. 
The  manufacture  of  automobile  bodies  is  akin  to  the  manu- 
facture of  airplanes  to  the  extent  that  each  is  a  fabrication  of 
accurate,  interchangeable  wood  and  sheet-steel  parts.  The 
Fisher  organization  brought  into  the  enterprise  not  only 
machinery  and  buildings,  but  also  a  skilled  organization 
trained  in  such  production  on  a  large  scale.  At  Dayton,  Ohio, 
the  Dayton- Wright  Airplane  Corporation  was  created.  With 
this  company  was  associated  Orville  Wright,  and  its  engineer- 
ing force  was  built  up  around  the  old  Wright  organization.  A 
number  of  immense  buildings  which  had  been  recently  erected 
for  other  purposes  were  at  once  utilized  in  this  new  under- 
taking. 

As  an  addition  to  these  two  large  sources  of  supply,  J.  G. 
White  &  Company  and  J.  G.  Brill  &  Company,  the  well- 
known  builders  of  street  cars,  formed  the  Springfield  Aircraft 
Corporation  at  Springfield,  Massachusetts.  Also,  certain  for- 
ward-looking men  on  the  Pacific  coast  created  in  California 
several  airplane  plants,  some  of  which  ultimately  became 
satisfactory  producers  of  training  planes. 

At  this  point  in  the  development  we  were  not  aware  of  the 
great  production  of  spare  parts  that  would  be  necessary.  Yet 
we  did  understand  that  there  must  be  a  considerable  production 
of  spares ;  and  in  order  to  take  the  burden  of  this  manufacture 
from  the  regular  airplane  plants,  and  also  to  educate  other 
factories  up  to  the  point  at  which  they  could  undertake  the 
construction  of  complete  airplanes,  we  placed  many  contracts 
for  spare  parts  with  widely  scattered  concerns.  Among  the 
principal  producers  of  spares  were  the  Metz  Company,  Wal- 
tham,  Massachusetts;  the  Sturtevant  Aeroplane  Company, 
Jamaica  Plain,  Massachusetts;  the  Wilson  Body  Company, 
Bay  City,  Michigan;  the  West  Virginia  Aircraft  Corporation, 
W^heeling,  West  Virginia;  the  Rubay  Company,  Cleveland, 
Ohio;  the  Engel  Aircraft  Company,  Niles,  Ohio;  and  the 
Hayes-Ionia  Company,  Grand  Rapids,  Michigan. 

For  a  long  time  the  supply  of  spare  parts  was  insufficient  for 


AIRPLANES  345 

the  needs  of  the  training  fields.  This  was  only  partly  due  to  the 
early  lack  of  a  proper  realization  of  the  quantity  of  spares  that 
would  be  required.  The  production  of  spares  on  an  adequate 
scale  was  hampered  by  numerous  manufacturing  difficulties 
incident  to  new  industry  of  any  sort  in  shops  unacquainted 
with  the  work,  and  by  a  lack  of  proper  drawings  for  the  parts. 


Production  of  Training  Planes 

Advanced 

Advanced 

Primary 

training 

Primary 

training 

training 

planes, 

training 

planes. 

planes. 

JN-4  and 

planes. 

JN-4  and 

SJ.i, 

6H,  S.4B 

SJ.I, 

6H,  S-4B 

JN.4D, 

and  C,E-i, 

JN.4D, 

and  C,  E-i, 

Penguin 

SE.5 

Penguin 

SE-5 

1917 

1918  (cont.) 

April     . 

March         .      .     756 

178 

May      .      . 

April     . 

645 

81 

June 

9 

May      .      . 

419 

166 

July      .      . 

56 

June 

126 

313 

August 

103 

July      .      . 

236 

427 

September 

193 

August 

296 

193 

October 

340 

September 

233 

132 

November 

•     331 

1 

October 

212 

320 

December  . 

•     423 

20 

November 

186 

297 

1918 

December  . 

162 

259 

January 

.     700 

29 

February    . 

.     526 

199 

Total  .        5,952 

2,615 

As  to  the  training  planes  themselves,  with  all  factories  in  the 
country  devoting  themselves  at  the  start  to  this  type  exclu- 
sively, the  production  soon  attained  great  momentum.  The 
Curtiss  Company,  in  particular,  produced  training  planes  at  a 
pace  far  beyond  anything  previously  attained.  The  maximum 
production  of  JN-4  machines  was  reached  in  March,  1918, 
when  756  were  turned  out. 

Advanced  training  machines  are  faster,  traveling  at  about 
105  miles  an  hour;  and  they  carry  various  types  of  equipment 
to  train  observers,  gunners,  photographers,  and  radio  men.  For 
this  machine  we  adopted  the  Curtiss  JN— 4H,  which  was  sub- 


346  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

stantially  the  same  as  the  primary  training  plane  except  that 
it  carried  a  150-horsepower  Hispano-Suiza  engine.  We  also 
built  a  few  "penguins,"  a  kind  of  half  airplane  that  never 
leaves  the  ground;  but  this  French  method  of  training  with 
penguins  we  never  truly  adopted. 

The  finishing  school  for  our  aviators  was  in  France,  where 
the  training  was  conducted  in  Nieuports  and  other  fighting 
machines. 

In  July,  1918,  we  reached  the  maximum  production  of  the 
advanced  training  machines,  the  output  being  427.  As  the 
supply  of  primary  training  planes  met  the  demands  of  the 
fields,  the  production  was  reduced.  The  original  equipment, 
kept  up  by  only  enough  manufacture  to  produce  spares  and 
replacement  machines,  would  suffice  to  train  all  the  aviators 
we  should  need. 

THE  SERVICE  PLANES 

It  was  not  until  we  took  up  the  production  of  fighting,  or 
service,  airplanes  that  we  came  to  a  full  realization  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  engineering  and  manufacturing  problems 
involved.  We  had  perhaps  a  dozen  men  in  the  United  States 
who  knew  something  about  the  designing  of  flying  machines, 
but  not  one  in  touch  with  the  development  of  the  art  in 
Europe  or  competent  to  design  a  complete  fighting  airplane. 
We  had  the  necessary  talent  to  produce  designs  and  conduct 
the  manufacture  of  training  planes ;  but  at  the  outset,  at  least, 
we  were  unwilling  to  attempt  designs  for  service  planes  on 
our  own  initiative.  At  the  beginning  we  were  entirely  guided, 
as  to  types  of  fighting  machines,  by  the  Boiling  mission  in 
France. 

In  approaching  this,  the  more  difficult  phase  of  the  airplane 
problem,  our  first  act  was  to  take  an  inventory  of  the  engineer- 
ing plants  in  the  United  States  available  for  our  purposes.  With 
the  Curtiss  Company  were  Glenn  Curtiss,  a  leader  of  airplane 
design,  and  several  competent  engineers.  The  Curtiss  Company 
had  been  the  largest  producers  in  the  United  States  of  train- 
ing machines  for  the  British,  had  had  the  benefit  of  assistance 


AIRPLANES  347 

from  British  engineers,  and  therefore  possessed  more  knowl- 
edge and  experience  to  apply  to  the  service-plane  problem 
than  any  other  company.  For  this  reason  we  selected  this  plant 
to  duplicate  the  French  Spad  plane,  the  story  of  which  under- 
taking will  be  told  further  on.  Orville  Wright,  the  pioneer  of 
flying,  though  not  in  the  best  of  health,  was  devoting  his 
entire  time  to  experimental  work  in  Dayton.  Willard,  who  had 
designed  the  L.  W.  F.  airplane  and  was  then  with  the  Aero- 
marine  Company;  Charles  Day,  formerly  with  the  Sloane 
Manufacturing  Company,  and  then  with  the  Standard  Aircraft 
Corporation;  Starling  Burgess,  with  the  Burgess  Company,  of 
Marblehead,  Massachusetts ;  Grover  C.  Loening,  of  the  Sturte- 
vant  Company;  and  D.  D.  Thomas,  with  the  Thomas-Morse 
Company,  were  all  aviation  engineers  on  whom  we  could  call. 
One  of  the  best  experts  of  this  sort  in  the  country  was  Lieu- 
tenant Commander  Hunsaker,  of  the  Navy.  In  the  Signal  Corps 
we  had  Captain  V.  E.  Clark,  who  was  also  an  expert  in  avia- 
tion construction,  and  he  had  several  able  assistants  under  him. 
The  Burgess  factory  at  Marblehead,  the  Aeromarine  plants 
at  Nutley  and  Keyport,  New  Jersey,  and  the  Boeing  Air- 
plane Company  at  Seattle  were  to  work  exclusively  for  the 
Navy,  according  to  the  mutual  agreement,  taking  their  aero- 
nautical engineers  with  them.  This  gave  the  Army  the  engi- 
neering resources  of  the  Curtiss,  Dayton- Wright,  and  Thomas- 
Morse  companies. 

We  early  decided  to  give  precedence  in  this  country  to  the 
observation  type  of  service  plane,  eliminating  the  single-place 
fighter  altogether  and  following  the  observation  planes  as  soon 
as  possible  with  production  of  two-place  fighting  machines. 
This  decision  was  based  on  the  fact,  not  always  generally  re- 
membered, that  the  primary  purpose  of  war  flying  is  observa- 
tion. The  duels  in  the  air  that  occurred  in  large  numbers,  espe- 
cially during  the  earlier  stages  of  the  war,  were  primarily  to 
protect  the  observation  machines  or  to  prevent  observation  by 
enemy  machines. 

The  first  service  plane  which  we  put  into  production — it 
proved  to  be  the  main  reliance  of  our  service-plane  program — 


348  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

was  the  De  Haviland-4,  which  is  an  observation  two-place 
airplane  propelled  by  a  Liberty  12-cylinder  engine.  As  soon 
as  the  Boiling  mission  began  to  recommend  types  of  service 
machines,  it  sent  samples  of  the  planes  thus  recommended.  The 
sample  De  Haviland  was  received  in  New  York  on  July  18, 
1917.  After  it  had  been  studied  by  various  officers  it  was  sent 


FIGURE  16 

De  Haviland— 4.  Airplanes  Produced  Each 
Month  during  igi8 


1097 


1036 


Jan.     Feb.     Mar.     Apr.     May    Jun.    Jul.    Aug.     Sep.     Oct.     Nov.     Dec. 


to  Dayton.  It  had  reached  us  without  engine,  guns,  or  arma- 
ment, and  also  without  many  other  accessories  later  recom- 
mended as  essential  to  a  fighting  machine.  Before  we  could 
begin  any  duplication,  the  plane  had  to  be  redesigned  to  take 
our  machine  guns,  our  instruments,  and  our  other  accessories, 
as  well  as  our  Liberty  engine.  The  preliminary  designing  was 


AIRPLANES  349 

completed,  and  the  first  American-built  De  Haviland  model 
was  ready  to  fly  on  October  29,  1917. 

Figure  16  does  not  tell  quite  the  complete  story  of  De  Havi- 
land production,  for  in  August  and  September  204  De  Havi- 
land planes  which  had  been  built  were  shipped  to  France  with- 
out engines  and  were  there  knocked  down  to  provide  spare 
parts  for  other  De  Havilands  in  service.  These  204  machines, 
therefore,  do  not  appear  in  the  production  total.  Adding  them 
to  the  figures  above,  we  find  that  the  total  output  of  De  Havi- 
land airplanes  up  to  the  end  of  December,  1918,  was  in  number 

4'587- 

The  production  of  the  model  machine  only  served  to  show 

us  some  of  the  problems  which  must  be  overcome  before  we 
could  secure  a  standard  design  that  could  go  into  quantity  pro- 
duction. Experimental  work  on  the  De  Haviland  continued 
during  December,  1917,  and  January  and  February,  1918. 
The  struggle — for  it  was  a  struggle — to  secure  harmony  be- 
tween this  English  design  and  the  American  equipment  which 
it  must  contain  ended  triumphantly  on  the  8th  day  of  April, 
1918,  when  the  machine  known  as  No.  31  was  completely 
finished  and  established  as  the  model  for  the  future  De  Havi- 
lands. The  characteristics  of  the  standard  American  De 
Haviland-4  were  as  follows: 

Endurance  at  6,500  feet,  full  throttle,  2  hours,  13  minutes 

Endurance  at  6,500  feet,  half  throttle,  3  hours,  3  minutes 

Ceiling,  19,500  feet 

Climb  to  10,000  feet  (loaded),  14  minutes 

Speed  at  ground  level,  124.7  miles 

Speed  at  6,500  feet,  120  miles 

Speed  at  10,000  feet,  117  miles 

Speed  at  15,000  feet,  113  miles 

Weight,  bare  plane,  2,391  pounds 

Weight,  loaded,  3,582  pounds 

("Endurance"  here  means  the  length  of  time  the  fuel  supply 
will  last.  The  "ceiling"  is  the  maximum  altitude  at  which  the 
plane  can  be  maneuvered  in  actual  service.  "Ground  level" 
means  only  far  enough  above  the  ground  to  be  clear  of 
obstructions.) 


350  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  first  De  Havilands  to  arrive  in  France  were  imme- 
diately put  together,  such  remediable  imperfections  as  existed 
were  corrected  then  and  there,  and  the  machines  were  flown 
to  the  training  fields.  The  changing  and  increasing  demands 
of  the  service  indicated  the  advisability  of  certain  changes  of 
design.  The  foreign  manufacturers  had  brought  out  a  covering 
for  the  gasoline  tanks  which  made  them  nearly  leak-proof, 
even  when  perforated  by  a  bullet.  In  the  first  De  Havilands 
the  location  of  the  principal  gas  tanks  between  the  pilot  and 
the  observer  was  not  the  best  arrangement:  the  men  were  too 
far  apart  from  each  other,  and  if  the  machine  went  down,  the 
pilot  would  be  crushed  by  the  gas  tank.  Also,  the  radius  of 
action  was  not  considered  to  be  great  enough,  even  though  the 
later  machines  of  this  type  carried  eighty-eight  gallons  of 
gasoline. 

The  American  aircraft  designers  thereupon  brought  out  an 
improved  De  Haviland,  known  as  the  9-A.  This  carried  a 
Liberty- 12  engine;  and  the  main  differences  between  it  and 
the  De  Haviland-4  were  new  locations  for  pilot  and  tanks 
(their  positions  being  interchanged),  increased  gasoline  capac- 
ity, and  increased  wing  surface.  The  machine  was  a  cleaner, 
more  finished  design;  it  showed  slightly  more  speed  and  had  a 
greater  radius  of  action  than  the  De  Haviland-4,  which  it  was 
planned  to  succeed.  We  ordered  4,000  of  the  new  machines 
from  the  Curtiss  Company,  but  the  armistice  cut  short  this 
production. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  producing  new  service  planes 
on  a  great  scale  without  previous  experience  in  such  construc- 
tion are  clearly  shown  in  the  attempts  we  made  to  duplicate 
other  successful  foreign  planes.  On  September  12,  1917,  we 
received  from  the  aviation  experts  abroad  a  sample  of  the 
French  Spad.  Having  been  previously  advised  to  go  into  a 
heavy  production  of  this  model,  we  had  made  arrangements 
for  the  Curtiss  Company  at  Buffalo  to  undertake  the  work. 
This  development  was  well  under  way  when,  in  December,  a 
cablegram  from  General  Pershing  advised  us  to  leave  the  pro- 
duction of  all  single-place  fighters  to  Europe.  We  canceled  the 


Photo  from  Air  Service 


THE  U.  S.  DE  HAVILAND  9-A 


Photo  from  Air  Service 

AIRPLANES  READY  FOR  SHIPMENT  FROM  FACTORY 


'    '                             u  ?^ 

1 

i 

l^jj^^^^PR^!^^^^^^    •; 

■J^-^y^' 

AIRPLANES  351 

Spad  order,  and  thereafter  attempted  to  build  no  single-place 
pursuit  planes.  At  the  time,  this  course  seemed  to  be  justified. 
The  day  of  the  single  seater  seemed  to  be  over.  The  lone  occu- 
pant of  the  single  seater  can  not  keep  his  attention  in  all  direc- 
tions at  once;  and  as  the  planes  grew  thicker  in  the  air,  the 
casualties  among  fliers  increased.  But  the  development  of  for- 
mation flying  restored  the  single-place  machine  to  favor.  The 
formation  had  no  blind  spot,  and  it  removed  the  principal  ob- 
jection to  the  single  seater.  The  end  of  the  war  found  the  one- 
man  airplane  more  useful  than  ever.  Our  concentration  here, 
however,  was  upon  two-place  fighters. 

On  x\ugust  25,  1917,  we  received  from  abroad  a  sample  of 
the  Bristol  fighting  plane,  a  two-seat  machine.  The  govern- 
ment engineers  at  once  began  redesigning  this  machine  to  take 
the  Liberty— 12  engine  and  the  American  ordnance  and  acces- 
sories. The  engine  which  had  been  used  in  the  Bristol  plane 
developed  275  horsepower.  We  proposed  to  equip  it  with  an 
engine  developing  400  horsepower.  The  Bristol  undertaking 
was  not  successful.  The  fact  that,  later  in  the  airplane  pro- 
gram, American  designers  successfully  developed  two-seater 
pursuit  planes  around  the  Liberty-12  engine  shows  that  the 
change  of  engines  was  not  the  cause  of  the  failure.  There 
were  repeated  changes  in  the  engineering  management  of  the 
Bristol  job.  First  the  government  engineers  alone  undertook 
it;  then  the  government  engineers  combined  with  the  drafting 
force  of  the  airplane  factory;  finally  the  Government  placed 
on  the  factory  the  entire  responsibility  for  the  job,  without, 
however,  permitting  the  manufacturer  to  correct  any  of  the 
basic  principles  involved.  On  the  whole  the  development  of 
an  American  Bristol  was  most  unsatisf acton,-,  and  the  project 
was  definitely  abandoned  in  June,   1918. 

The  fundamental  difficulty  in  all  these  attempts  was  that 
we  were  trv'ing  to  fit  an  American  engine  to  a  foreign  air- 
plane, instead  of  building  an  American  airplane  around  an 
American  engine.  It  was  inevitable  that  this  difficulty  should 
arise.  We  had  skill  to  produce  a  great  engine,  and  we  did  so; 
but  for  our  planes  for  this   engine  we   relied  upon   foreign 


352  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

models  until  we  were  sufficiently  advanced  in  the  art  to  design 
for  ourselves.  We  were  successful  in  making  the  adaptation 
only  with  the  De  Haviland,  and  then  only  after  great  delay. 
But  eventually  we  were  to  see  some  brilliantly  successful 
efforts  to  design  a  two-place  fighter  around  the  Liberty- 12. 
We  had  need  of  such  a  mechanism  to  supplement  the  De 
Haviland  observation-plane  production  and  make  a  complete 
service-plane  program. 

On  January  4,  1918,  Captain  Lepere,  a  French  aeronautical 
engineer,  who  had  formerly  been  with  the  French  Government 
at  St.  Cyr,  began  experimental  work  on  a  new  plane  at  the 
factory  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company.  By  May  18  his 
work  had  advanced  to  a  stage  where  the  Government  felt 
justified  in  entering  into  a  contract  with  the  Packard  Company 
to  provide  shop  facilities  for  the  production  of  twenty-five 
experimental  planes  under  Captain  Lepere's  direction.  The 
result  of  these  efforts  was  a  two-place  fighting  machine  built 
around  a  Liberty  engine.  From  the  start  this  design  met  with 
the  approval  of  the  manufacturer  and  engineers,  because  of  its 
clean-cut  perfection. 


Ferforfnance  of  Lepere  Service  Plane 

Climb Speed 

Miles  an 
Altitude  Time  R.P.M*  hour  R.P.M* 

min.  sec. 

Ground     ...          o        o  1,500  136  1,800 

10,000  feet      .     .         10  35  1,520  132  1,740 

15,000  feet      .      .         19  15  1,500  118  1,620 

20,000  feet      .      .         41  1480  102  1,550 

*  R.  P.  M.  =:  revolutions  made  by  propeller  in  a  minute. 


Here  at  last  was  a  machine  that  performed  brilliantly  in 
the  air  and  contained  great  possibilities  for  quantity  produc- 
tion, because  it  was  designed  from  the  start  to  fit  American 
manufacturing  methods.  We  placed  orders  for  3,525  Lepere 
machines.  None  of  the  factories,  however,  had  come  into  pro- 


AIRPLANES  353 

duction  with  the  Lepere  on  November  1 1,  1918.  Seven  sample 
machines  had  been  turned  out  and  put  through  every  test.  It 
was  the  belief  of  those  in  authority  that  at  last  the  training 
and  technique  of  the  best  aeronautical  engineers  of  France 
had  been  combined  with  the  Liberty,  probably  the  best  of  all 
aerial  engines;  and  it  was  believed  that  the  spring  of  1919 
would  see  the  Yankee  fliers  equipped  with  American  fighting 
machines  superior  to  anything  they  would  be  required  to  meet. 
Nor  were  these  expectations  without  justification.  The  weeks 
and  months  following  the  declaration  of  the  armistice  and 
extending  through  to  the  spring  of  1919  were  to  witness  the 
birth  of  a  whole  brood  of  new,  typically  American  designs  of 
airplanes,  of  which  the  Lepere  was  the  forerunner.  In  short, 
when  the  armistice  brought  the  great  aviation  enterprise  to  an 
abrupt  end,  the  American  industry  had  fairly  caught  that  of 
Europe,  and  American  designers  were  ready  to  match  their 
skill  against  that  of  the  master  builders  of  France,  Great 
Britain,  Italy,  and  the  Central  Powers. 

The  Lepere  two-seated  fighter  was  quickly  followed  by  two 
other  Lepere  models — one  of  them,  known  as  the  Lepere  C-21, 
being  armored  and  driven  by  a  Bugatti  engine,  the  other  a  tri- 
plane  driven  by  two  Liberty  engines  and  designed  to  be  a  day 
bomber.  Then  the  first  American-designed  single-seat  pursuit 
planes  began  making  their  appearance — the  Thomas-Morse 
pursuit  plane,  its  164  miles  an  hour  at  ground  level  making 
it  the  fastest  airplane  ever  tested  by  our  Government,  if  not 
the  fastest  ever  built;  the  Ordnance  Engineering  Corporation's 
Scout,  an  advanced  training  plane ;  and  several  others.  In  two- 
seater  fighting  planes  there  was  the  Loening  monoplane,  an 
extremely  swift  and  advanced  type.  There  were  several  other 
new  two-seaters,  designed  experimentally  in  some  instances, 
and  some  of  them  giving  roseate  promise. 

Perhaps  the  severest  and  most  exacting  critic  of  aviation 
material  is  the  aviator  who  has  to  fly  the  plane  and  fight  with 
the  equipment  at  the  front.  Brigadier  General  William 
Mitchell,  then  a  colonel,  was  sent  to  France  in  1917.  He  be- 
came, in  succession.  Chief  of  the  Air  Service  of  the  First  Army 


354  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Corps,  Chief  of  the  Air  Service  of  the  First  Army,  and  finally 
Chief  of  the  Air  Service  of  the  American  group  of  armies  in 
France.  He  commanded  the  aerial  operations  at  the  reduction 
of  the  St.  Mihiel  salient,  where  he  gained  the  distinction  of 
having  commanded  more  airplanes  in  action  than  were  ever 
assembled  before  under  a  single  command.  At  St.  Mihiel  there 
were  1,200  Allied  planes  in  action,  including,  with  our  own, 
French,  English,  and  Italian  planes.  General  Mitchell,  there- 
fore, spoke  as  a  high  authority  on  the  merits  of  air  equipment 
from  the  airman's  standpoint.  In  the  spring  of  1919,  after  a 
thorough  investigation  of  the  latest  types  of  American  planes 
and  aerial  equipment  at  the  Wilbur  Wright  Field  at  Dayton, 
he  sent  to  the  Director  of  Air  Service,  Washington,  D.  C,  the 
following  telegram  under  the  date  April  20: 

I  recommend  the  following  airplanes  in  the  numbers  given  be  pur- 
chased at  once:  100  Lepere  2-place  corps  observation,  50  Loening  2- 
place  pursuit,  100  Ordnance  Engineering  Corporation  i-place  pursuit, 
100  Thomas-Morse  i-place  pursuit,  50  USD9-A  day  bombardment, 
700  additional  Hispano-Suiza  300-horsepower  engines,  2,000  para- 
chutes. All  of  the  above  types  are  the  equal  of  or  better  than  anything 
in  Europe. 

Mitchell. 

Let  us  examine  some  of  the  specifications  and  performances 
of  these  new  models.  The  USD9-A,  the  redesigned  and  im- 
proved De  Haviland— 4,  was  a  two-place  bombing  plane  of  the 
tractor  biplane  type,  equipped  with  a  Liberty— 12  engine  and 
weighing  4,872  pounds  when  loaded  with  fuel,  oil,  guns,  and 
bombs  and  with  its  crew  aboard.  With  this  weight  its  perform- 
ance record  in  the  official  tests  at  Wilbur  Wright  Field  in 
Dayton  was  as  follows: 

Speed  (miles  per  hour)  : 

At  ground        .           .           .           .           .  12 1.5 

At  6,500  feet  .....  118.5 

At  10,000  feet           .          .          .          .  115-5 

At  15,000  feet           ....  95.5 


AIRPLANES 


Climb : 

To  6,500  feet  . 
To  10,000  feet 
To  15,000  feet 

Service  ceiling 


355 

1 1  minutes,  40  seconds 
19  minutes,  30  seconds 
49  minutes 
14,400  feet 


The  Lepere  C-11,  a  tractor  biplane  equipped  with  a 
Liberty-12  engine,  Packard  make,  weighing  with  its  load 
aboard  3,655  pounds,  performed  as  follows  in  the  tests  at  the 
Wilbur  Wright  Field: 


Speed  (miles  per  hour)  : 

At  ground 

. 

136 

At  6,500  feet  . 

. 

130 

At  10,000  feet 

. 

127 

At  15,000  feet 

. 

118 

Climb : 

To  6,500  feet  . 

6  minutes 

To  10,000  feet 

. 

10  minutes,  35  seconds 

To  15,000  feet 

. 

19  minutes,  15  seconds 

Service  ceiling 

21,000  feet 

Endurance  at  full  speed 

at  ground     . 

2.5  hours 

The  Lepere  carried  two  Marlin  guns  synchronized  with  the 
propeller  and  operated  by  the  pilot,  and  two  Lewis  guns 
operated  by  the  observer.  A  total  of  1,720  rounds  of  ammuni- 
tion was  carried. 

The  Loening  monoplane,  a  tractor  airplane  equipped  with 
an  Hispano-Suiza  300-horsepower  engine  and  representing, 
loaded,  a  gross  weight  of  2,680  pounds,  its  military  load 
including  two  Marlin  and  two  Lewis  machine  guns,  performed 
as  follows  at  the  Wilbur  Wright  Field : 


Speed  (miles  per  hour)  : 
At  ground 
At  6,500  feet  . 
At  10,000  feet 
At  15,000  feet 


H3-5 
138.2 

135 
127.6 


356  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Climb : 

To  6,500  feet  .....  5  minutes,  12  seconds 

To  10,000  feet  ....  9  minutes,  12  seconds 

To  15,000  feet  .  .  .  •  18  minutes,  24  seconds 

Service  ceiling 18,500  feet 

The  Ordnance  Scout  with  a  Le  Rhone  80-horsepower  engine, 
weighing,  loaded,  1,117  pounds,  was  an  advanced  training 
plane.  In  its  official  test  at  Wilbur  Wright  Field  it  performed 
as  follows: 


Speed  (miles  per  hour)  : 

At  6,500  feet 90 

At  10,000  feet  ....  83.7 

At  15,000  feet  ....  69.8 

Climb : 

To  6,000  feet  .....  8  minutes,  30  seconds 

To  10,000  feet  .  .  .  .  17  minutes,  40  seconds 

To  14,000  feet  ....  43  minutes,  20  seconds 

The  Thomas-Morse  MB-3  pursuit  plane,  a  tractor  biplane 
equipped  with  an  Hispano-Suiza  300-horsepower  engine, 
weighing,  including  its  crew,  but  without  military  load,  1,880 
pounds,  in  unofficial  tests  at  Wilbur  Wright  Field  performed 
as  follows: 

Speed  at  ground  level  (miles  per  hour)      .  163.68 

Climb  to   10,000  feet        ....  4  minutes,  52  seconds 

This  plane  was  armed  with  two  Browning  machine  guns  syn- 
chronized with  the  propeller  and  carried  1,500  rounds  of 
ammunition. 

Uncertain  as  we  originally  were  as  to  types  of  pursuit  and 
observation  planes  to  produce  in  this  country,  we  were  still 
more  uncertain  as  to  designs  of  night-bombing  machines.  These 
relatively  slow  weight-carrying  planes  were  big  and  required 
the  motive  power  of  two  or  three  engines,  with  the  complica- 
tions attendant  upon  double  or  triple  power  plants.  They 
really   presented   the   most   difficult   manufacturing  problem 


AIRPLANES  357 

which  we  encountered.  Until  the  summer  of  1918  there  were 
only  two  machines  of  this  type  which  we  could  adopt,  the 
Handley-Page  and  the  Caproni.  We  put  the  Handley-Page 
into  production,  not  necessarily  because  it  was  as  perfect  as  the 
Caproni,  but  because  we  could  get  the  drawings  for  it  and 
could  not  get  the  drawings  for  the  Caproni,  owing  to  com- 
plications in  the  negotiations  for  the  right  to  construct  the 
Italian  airplane.  We  were  not  entirely  satisfied  with  the  deci- 
sion to  build  Handley-Pages,  because  its  ceiling,  or  maximum 
working  altitude  which  it  could  attain,  was  low;  and,  twelve 
months  later,  when  we  were  in  production,  we  might  find  the 
Handley-Pages  of  doubtful  value  because  of  the  ever-increas- 
ing ranges  of  anti-aircraft  guns. 

We  secured  a  set  of  drawings,  supposed  to  be  complete,  for 
the  Handley-Page  in  August,  1917;  but  twice  during  the 
following  winter  new  sets  of  drawings  were  sent  from  Eng- 
land, and  few,  if  any,  of  the  parts  as  designed  in  the  original 
drawings  escaped  alteration.  The  Handley-Page  had  a  wing 
spread  of  over  100  feet.  It  was  evident  from  the  start  that  the 
fuselage,  wings,  and  other  large  parts  of  such  a  machine  could 
not  be  assembled  in  this  country  for  shipment  complete  to 
Europe.  We  decided  to  manufacture  the  parts  in  this  country 
and  assemble  the  machines  in  England,  the  British  air  min- 
istry in  London  having  entered  into  a  contract  for  the  creation 
of  an  assembling  factory  at  Oldham,  England,  in  the  Lanca- 
shire district.  When  it  is  realized  that  each  Handley-Page 
involved  100,000  separate  parts,  something  of  the  magnitude 
of  the  manufacturing  job  can  be  understood.  And  after  they 
were  manufactured,  these  parts,  particularly  the  delicate  mem- 
bers made  of  wood,  had  to  be  carefully  packed  if  they  were  to 
reach  England  in  good  condition.  The  packing  of  the  parts 
was  in  itself  a  problem. 

We  proposed  to  drive  the  American  Handley-Page  with 
two  Liberty- 12  engines.  The  fittings,  extremely  intricate 
pieces  of  pressed  steel  work,  were  practically  all  to  be  produced 
by  the  Mullins  Steel  Boat  Company  at  Salem,  Ohio.  Contracts 
for  the  other  parts  were  placed  with  the  Grand  Rapids  Air- 


358  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

plane  Company,  a  concern  which  had  been  organized  by  a 
group  of  furniture  makers  at  Grand  Rapids,  Michigan.  All 
the  parts  were  to  be  brought  together,  previously  to  ocean 
shipment,  in  a  warehouse  built  for  the  purpose  at  the  plant  of 
the  Standard  Aero  Corporation  at  Elizabeth,  New  Jersey.  The 
Standard  Aero  Corporation  was  engaged,  under  contract,  to 
set  up  lo  per  cent  of  the  Handley-Page  machines  complete  in 
this  country.  These  were  to  be  used  at  our  training  fields.  The 
engineering  details  proved  to  be  a  serious  cause  of  delay.  We 
found  it  difficult  to  install  the  Liberty  engines  in  this  foreign 
plane.  When  the  armistice  cut  short  operations,  loo  complete 
sets  of  parts  had  been  shipped  to  England,  and  seven  complete 
machines  had  been  assembled  in  this  country.  None  of  the 
American-built  Handley-Page  machines  saw  service  in  France. 
There  had  been  great  delay  in  the  construction  of  the  assem- 
bling plant  in  England,  and  the  work  of  setting  up  the  machines 
had  only  started  when  the  armistice  was  signed. 

The  performance  table  of  the  Handley-Page  indicates  its 
capacities : 

Speed  at  ground  level,  97  miles  an  hour 
Climb  to  7,000  feet,  18  minutes,  10  seconds 
Climb  to  10,000  feet,  29  minutes 
Ceiling  ( 14,000  feet),  60  minutes 

On  its  tests  390  gallons  of  gasoline,  20  gallons  of  oil,  and  7 
men  were  carried,  but  no  guns,  ammunition,  or  bombs. 

After  a  long  delay,  about  January  1,  1918,  tentative 
arrangements  had  been  made  with  the  Caproni  interests  for 
the  production  of  Caproni  biplanes  in  this  country.  These 
machines  had  a  higher  ceiling  and  a  greater  speed  than  the 
Handley-Page.  Captain  d'Annunzio,  with  fourteen  expert 
Italian  workmen,  came  to  this  country,  bringing  with  them  de- 
signs and  samples,  and  initiated  the  redesigning  of  the  Caproni 
machine  to  accommodate  three  Liberty  engines.  The  actual 
production  of  Caproni  planes  in  this  country  was  limited  to  a 
few  samples,  which  were  being  tested  when  the  annistice  was 
signed.  The  factories  had  tooled  up  for  the  production,  how- 


AIRPLANES  359 

ever,  and  in  a  few  months  Capronis  would  doubtless  have  been 
produced  in  liberal  quantities. 


Test  Performances  of  Caproni  Biplane 

Test  I  Test  2 

Speed  at  ground  level      lOO  miles  an  hour  103.2  miles  an  hour 

Climb  to  6,500  feet  16  minutes,  18  seconds  14  minutes,  12  seconds 

Climb  to  10,000  feet  33  minutes,  18  seconds  28  minutes,  42  seconds 

Climb  to  1 1,200  feet  49  minutes  

Climb  to  13,000  feet  46  minutes,  30  seconds 


As  we  had  produced  superlatively  good  fighting  planes  built 
around  the  Liberty  motor,  so  American  invention,  with  the 
experience  of  several  months  of  actual  production  behind  it, 
was  able  to  bring  out,  too,  an  American  night-bombing  plane 
that  promised  to  supersede  all  other  types  in  existence.  This 
machine  was  designed  by  Glenn  L.  Martin  in  the  fall  of  igi8. 
It  was  a  night-bomber  equipped  with  two  Liberty  l2-cylinder 
engines.  The  Martin  spread  of  75  feet  gave  it  a  carrying  capac- 
ity comparable  with  that  of  the  Handley-Page.  Its  speed  of 
118  miles  an  hour  at  ground  level  far  exceeded  that  of  either 
the  Caproni  or  the  Handley-Page,  and  it  was  evident  that  its 
ceiling  would  be  higher  than  that  of  the  Caproni.  (The  esti- 
mated ceiling  of  the  Martin  was  18,000  feet.)  The  machine 
never  reached  the  stage  of  actual  quantity  production,  but 
several  experimental  models  were  built  and  tested.  Being  built 
around  its  engine,  it  embodied  clean-cut  principles  of  design, 
and  its  performances  in  the  air  were  extraordinary  for  a 
machine  of  its  type. 


Test  Peri 

ormances  of  Martin  Bomber 

Speed  at  ground  level 
Climb  to  6,500  feet 
Climb  to  10,000  feet 
Climb  to  15,000  feet 
Total  weight 

Test  I 
113.3  miles  an  hour 
10  minutes,  45  seconds 
21  minutes,  20  seconds 

Test  2 
1 18.8  miles  an  hour 
7  minutes 
14  minutes 

30  minutes,  30  seconds 
8,137  pounds 

9,663  pounds 

36o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

The  total  delivery  of  airplanes  to  the  United  States  during 
the  period  of  the  war  was  16,952.  These  came  from  the  follow- 
ing sources:  United  States  contractors,  1 1,754;  France,  4,881 ; 
England,  258;  Italy,  59. 


FIGURE  17 

U.  S.  Airplane  Squadrons  at  the  Yronf^ 


Apr.  30, 

1918 

3 

May  31, 

1918 

12 

June  30, 

1918 

13 

July  31, 

1918 

14 

Aug.  31, 

1918 

26 

Sept.  30, 

1918 

32 

Oct.  31, 

1918 

43 

Nov.  11, 

1918 

45 

*  A  squadron  is  equipped  with  from  fifteen  to  twenty-five  planes. 


Estimates  of  aircraft  strength  on  the  front  were  always 
dubious,  because  of  variations  in  the  number  of  planes  in  a 
squadron.  The  standing  of  the  United  States  in  airplanes  at 
the  front  is  indicated  by  the  estimate  of  the  American  Air 
Service  as  of  November  11,  1918.  The  figures  of  this  estimate 
are  as  follows: 


France         ...........  3,000 

Great  Britain 2,ioo 

United  States 860 

Italy 600 

Total 6,560 


These  figures  represent  fighting  planes  equipped  ready  for 
service,  but  do  not  include  replacement  machines  at  the  front 
or  in  depots,  or  training  machines  in  France. 

The  actual  strength  of  the  Central  Powers  in  the  air  is  at 
this  time  not  definitely  known  to  us.  Such  figures  as  we  have 
are  viewed  with  suspicion,  because  of  the  two  methods  of 
observation  in  reporting  an  enemy  squadron.  There  may  be 


Photo  from  Air  Service 


THE  MARTIN  BOMBER 


F/io/o  pi'iii  An  Service 

FITTING  OUT  LEPERE  BIPLANES 


Photo  from  Air  Service 

ARMY  AIRPLANES  OVER  SAN  DIEGO 


Canadian  Official  Photograph  from  Underwood  ^  Underwood,  N.   Y . 

GERMAN  ARMORED  PLANE  SHOT  DOWN  IN  FRANCE 


AIRPLANES  361 

twenty-four  planes  to  a  squadron;  that  is,  there  may  be  that 
number  of  planes  in  active  service  in  the  air.  But  each  squadron 
has  a  complement  of  replacement  planes  equaling  the  number 
of  active  planes,  so  that  the  squadron  might  be  listed  as  having 
forty-eight  planes.  But  we  find  an  approximation  of  the  air 
strength  of  the  Central  Powers  in  a  report  from  the  Chief  of 
the  Air  Service  of  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces.  This 
report  shows  that,  on  July  30,  1918,  Germany  had  2,592 
planes  on  the  front,  and  Austria  717. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE 

r  I  ^HE  Liberty  engine  was  America's  distinctive  contribu-  I 
I  tion  to  the  war  in  the  air,  and  her  chief  one.  The  engine  I 
M.  was  developed  in  those  first  chaotic  weeks  of  prepa- 
ration of  1917,  when  our  knowledge  of  planes,  instruments, 
and  armament,  as  then  known  in  Europe,  was  still  a  thing  of 
the  future.  The  manufacture  of  engines  for  any  aeronautical 
purpose  was  a  task  which  we  could  approach  with  confidence. 
We  possessed  in  the  United  States  motor  engineering  talent  at 
least  as  great  as  any  in  Europe;  and  in  facilities  for  manufac- 
ture— in  the  plants  which  had  built  our  millions  of  automobile 
engines — no  other  part  of  the  world  could  compare  with  us. 
Therefore,  while  awaiting  word  from  Europe  as  to  the  best 
types  of  wings,  fuselages,  instruments,  and  the  like,  we  went 
ahead  to  produce  for  ourselves  a  new,  typically  American 
engine  which  would  uphold  the  prestige  of  America  in  actual 
battle. 

Many  Americans  have  doubtless  wondered  why  we  built  our 
own  engine  instead  of  adopting  one  or  more  of  the  highly  de- 
veloped European  engines  then  at  hand;  and  no  doubt  our 
course  in  this  vital  matter  has  sometimes  been  set  down  to  mere 
pride  in  our  ability  and  to  an  unwillingness  to  follow  the  lead 
of  other  nations  in  a  science  In  which  we  ourselves  were  pre- 
eminent— the  science  of  building  light  internal-combustion 
engines.  But  national  pride,  aside  from  giving  us  confidence 
that  our  efforts  in  this  direction  would  be  successful,  had  little 
weight  in  the  decision.  There  were  other  reasons,  and  para- 
mount ones — reasons  leading  directly  from  the  necessity  for 
the  United  States  to  arrive  at  her  maximum  aerial  effort  in  a 
minimum   of   time — that   irresistibly   compelled   the    aircraft 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  363 

production  organization  to  design  a  standard  American  engine. 
Let  us  examine  some  of  these  considerations. 

If  there  was  any  one  truth  to  be  observed  from  this  side  of 
the  Atlantic  with  respect  to  the  tendencies  of  aircraft  evolu- 
tion in  Europe,  it  was  that  the  horsepowers  of  the  engines  were 
continually  increasing,  these  expansions  coming  almost  from 
month  to  month  as  newer  and  newer  types  and  sizes  of  engines 
were  brought  out  by  the  European  inventors.  It  was  evident  to 
us  that  there  was  not  a  single  foreign  engine  then  in  use  on 
the  western  front  that  was  likely  to  survive  the  test  of  time. 
Each  might  be  expected  to  have  its  brief  day  of  supremacy, 
only  to  be  superseded  by  something  more  modern  and  more 
powerful.  Yet  time  was  an  element  to  which  we  in  this  coun- 
try must  give  grave  consideration.  To  produce  in  quantities 
such  as  we  were  capable  of  producing  would  ordinarily  require 
a  year  of  maximum  industrial  effort  to  equip  our  manufactur- 
ing plants  with  the  machines,  tools,  and  skilled  workmen  neces- 
sary for  the  production  of  parts.  The  finished  articles  would, 
under  normal  circumstances,  begin  coming  in  quantity  during 
the  second  year  of  our  program.  It  would  have  been  fatal  to 
tool  up  our  plants  for  the  manufacture  of  equipment  that 
would  be  out  of  date  by  the  time  we  could  begin  producing 
it,  a  year  later.  The  obvious  course  for  the  United  States  to 
adopt,  not  only  with  engines,  but  with  all  sorts  of  aeronautical 
equipment,  was  to  come  into  the  manufacturing  competition, 
not  abreast  with  European  progress,  but  several  strides  ahead 
of  it,  so  that  when  we  appeared  on  the  field  it  would  be  with 
equipment  a  little  in  advance,  in  type  and  efficiency,  of  any- 
thing the  rest  of  the  world  had  to  offer. 

This  factor  of  time  was  a  strong  element  in  the  decision  to 
produce  a  standard  American  engine;  for,  with  the  possible 
exception  of  the  Rolls-Royce,  there  was  no  engine  in  Europe 
of  sufficient  horsepower  and  proved  reliability  to  guarantee 
that  it  would  retain  its  serviceableness  for  the  two  years  upon 
which  we  must  reckon.  There  was  no  other  course  that  we 
could  safely  adopt. 

And  there  were  other  conditions  that  influenced  our  con- 


364  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

elusion.  We  believed  that  we  could  design  and  produce  an 
engine  much  more  quickly  and  with  much  better  results  than 
we  could  copy  and  produce  any  accredited  foreign  model.  This 
proved  to  be  true  in  actual  experience.  Along  with  the  produc- 
tion of  Liberty  engines  we  went  into  the  quantity  manufacture 
of  a  number  of  European  engines  in  this  country ;  and  the  expe- 
rience of  our  engineers  and  factory  executives  in  this  work 
was  anything  but  pleasant.  Among  others,  we  produced  in 
American  factories  the  Gnome,  Hispano-Suiza,  Le  Rhone,  and 
Bugatti  engines. 

Now,  European  manufacture  of  mechanical  appliances 
differs  from  ours  largely  in  the  degree  to  which  the  human 
equation  is  allowed  to  enter  the  shop.  In  continental  practice 
many  of  the  metallurgical  specifications  and  also  of  the  details 
of  mechanical  measurements,  limits  of  requisite  accuracy, 
variations  which  can  be  allowed,  etc.,  are  not  put  on  paper  in 
detail  for  the  guidance  of  operators,  but  are  confided  to  the 
recollections  of  the  individual  workmen.  A  machine  comes  in 
its  parts  to  the  assembly  room  of  a  foreign  factory,  and  after 
that  it  is  subject  to  adjustments  on  the  part  of  the  skilled  work- 
men before  its  operation  is  successful.  It  must,  so  to  speak,  be 
tinkered  with  before  it  will  go.  Nothing  of  the  sort  is  known 
in  an  American  factory.  When  standard  parts  come  together 
for  assembly  the  calibrations  must  have  been  so  exact  that  the 
machine  will  function  perfectly  when  it  is  brought  together; 
and  assembling  becomes  mere  routine.  Thus,  when  we  came 
to  adopt  foreign  plans  and  attempt  to  adapt  them  to  our  prac- 
tices, we  encountered  trouble  and  delay.  Thirteen  months  were 
required  to  adapt  the  Hispano-Suiza  1 50-horsepower  engine  to 
our  factory  methods  and  to  get  the  first  engine  from  production 
tools;  eight  months  were  similarly  spent  in  producing  the  Le 
Rhone  80-horsepower  engines.  Both  these  engines  had  been 
in  production  in  European  factories  for  a  long  time,  and  we 
had  the  advantage  of  all  the  assistance  which  the  foreign 
manufacturers  could  give  us. 

These  experiences  merely  confirmed  the  opinions  of  Ameri- 
can manufacturers  that  the  preparations  for  the  production  of 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  365 

any  aviation  engine  of  foreign  design — if  any  such  suitable 
and  adequate  engine  could  be  found — would  require  at  least 
as  much  time  as  to  design  and  tool  up  for  the  production  of  an 
American  engine.  When  to  this  consideration  was  added  the 
necessity  of  waiting  for  several  weeks  or  months  for  a  decision 
on  the  part  of  our  aviation  authorities,  either  in  the  United 
States  or  in  Europe,  as  to  which  of  the  many  types  of  engines 
then  in  use  by  the  Allies  should  be  put  into  production  here, 
procuring  and  shipping  to  this  country  suitable  samples,  draw- 
ings, and  specifications,  negotiating  with  foreign  owners  for 
rights  to  manufacture,  etc.,  there  was  but  one  tenable  decision 
to  be  made,  and  that  was  to  design  and  build  an  ail-American 
engine. 

Another  factor  in  the  decision  was  our  distance  from  France, 
which  made  it  necessary  for  us  to  simplify  as  much  as  possible 
the  problem  of  furnishing  repair  parts.  At  the  time  we  entered 
the  war  the  British  air  service  was  using  or  developing  thirty- 
seven  different  makes  of  engines.  France  had  forty-six.  Should 
we  be  lured  into  any  such  situation,  it  might  have  disastrous 
results,  if  only  because  of  the  difficulties  of  ocean  transporta- 
tion. Germany  was  practically  concentrating  upon  not  more 
than  eight  engines.  Our  obvious  course  was  to  produce  as  few 
types  of  engines  as  possible,  so  as  to  simplify  the  problem  of 
manufacturing  repair  parts  and  shipping  them  to  the  front. 

With  these  considerations  in  mind,  the  Equipment  Division 
of  the  Signal  Corps  determined,  in  May  of  1917,  to  go  ahead 
with  the  design  and  production  of  a  standard  engine  for  the 
fighting  forces  of  the  aviation  branch  of  the  Army. 

In  the  engineering  field  two  men  stood  out  who  combined  ex- 
perience in  designing  internal-combustion  engines,  which  most 
nearly  approached  combat  engines,  with  experience  in  large 
quantity  production.  J.  G.  Vincent,  with  the  engineering  staff 
of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company,  had  for  two  years  been 
engaged  in  research  work,  and  had  developed  several  types  of 
12-cylinder  aviation  engines  of  125  to  225  horsepower.  These 
were  not  suitable  for  military  purposes,  because  of  their  weight 
per  horsepower;  but  the  work  had  resulted  in  the  acquirement 


366  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  a  large  collection  of  data  and  information  which  would  be 
invaluable  in  the  design  of  such  an  engine  as  the  one  proposed, 
and  also  in  the  upbuilding  of  an  efficient  experimental  organi- 
zation. Mr.  Vincent  had  also  had  wide  experience  in  designing 
internal-combustion  motors  for  quantity  production.  E.  J. 
Hall,  of  the  Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Company,  had  for  eight 
years  been  developing  and,  latterly,  producing  several  types  of 
aeronautical  engines,  which  he  had  delivered  into  the  service 
of  several  foreign  governments,  including  Russia,  Norway, 
China,  Japan,  Australia,  Canada,  and  England.  He  had  also 
completed  and  tested  a  i2-cylinder  engine  of  300  horsepower, 
which  was  of  too  great  weight  per  horsepower  to  be  suitable 
for  military  purposes  without  modifications.  He  had  thus  ac- 
quired a  broad  experience  and  an  invaluable  fund  of  informa- 
tion covering  the  proper  areas  and  materials  for  engine  parts, 
and  proper  methods  of  tests  to  be  applied  to  such  engines;  and 
in  addition  he,  like  Mr.  Vincent,  had  had  general  experience  in 
quantity  production.  All  this  information  and  experience  was 
of  invaluable  assistance,  not  only  in  designing  the  new  engine, 
but  in  determining  its  essential  metallurgical  and  manufac- 
turing specifications. 

These  two  men  were  qualified,  then,  in  talent  and  in  prac- 
tice, to  lay  down  on  paper  the  lines  and  dimensions  of  the 
proposed  engine,  an  engine  that  would  meet  the  Army's  require- 
ments and  still  be  readily  capable  of  prompt  quantity  produc- 
tion. They  had  in  their  hands  the  power  to  draw  freely  upon 
the  past  experience  and  achievement  of  practically  the  entire 
world  for  any  feature  which  they  might  decide  to  install  in 
the  model  power  plant  to  be  produced.  And  this  power  applied 
to  the  patented  features,  not  only  of  American  motors,  but  also 
of  foreign  engines;  for  each  man  had  exhaustively  studied  the 
leading  European  engines,  including  the  Mercedes,  upon  which 
Germany  largely  pinned  her  faith  up  to  the  end  of  the  war. 

With  respect  to  American  motor  patents,  an  interesting 
situation  had  arisen  in  the  automobile  industry.  The  leading 
producers  of  motor  cars  were  in  an  association  which  had 
adopted  an  arrangement  known  as  the  cross-licensing  agree- 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  367 

ment.  Under  this  agreement  all  patents  taken  out  by  the 
various  producers  (with  a  few  exceptions)  were  thrown  into 
a  pool  upon  which  any  producer  was  permitted  to  draw  at  will 
without  payment  of  royalties.  A  similar  arrangement  was 
adopted  with  respect  to  the  Liberty  engine,  except  that  the 
Government  pledged  itself  to  pay  an  agreed  royalty  for  the  use 
of  patents.  Thus  the  engineers,  in  designing  the  engine,  might 
reach  out  and  take  what  they  pleased,  regardless  of  patent 
rights.  The  result  was  likely  to  be  a  composite  type  embracing 
the  best  features  of  the  best  engines  ever  built.  Theoretically, 
at  least,  a  super-engine  ought  to  result  from  such  an  effort. 

The  ideal  aviation  engine  must  produce  a  maximum  of 
power  with  a  minimum  of  weight ;  it  must  run  at  its  maximum 
power  during  a  large  proportion  of  its  operating  time,  as  an 
automobile  motor  seldom,  if  ever,  does  for  more  than  a  few 
minutes  at  a  time ;  and  it  should  consume  oil  and  fuel  economi- 
cally, to  conserve  space  and  weight  on  the  airplane.  Such  was 
the  problem — the  design  of  an  engine  to  meet  these  require- 
ments— that  confronted  these  two  engineers  when  they  were 
called  to  Washington  and  asked  to  undertake  the  work. 

The  many  versions  of  the  story  of  how  the  experimental 
models  of  the  Liberty  engine  were  designed  and  produced  jus- 
tify the  use  of  space  here  for  the  exact  history  of  those  memor- 
able weeks. 

The  engine  was  put  on  paper  in  the  rooms  occupied  by 
Colonel  E.  A.  Deeds  at  the  Willard  Hotel  in  Washington. 
Colonel  Deeds  had  been  the  man  of  broad  vision  who,  by 
taking  into  consideration  the  elements  of  the  problems  enu- 
merated above,  determined  that  America  could  best  make  her 
contribution  to  the  aviation  program  by  producing  an  engine 
typically  her  own.  He  had  proposed  the  plan  to  his  associate. 
Colonel  S.  D.  Waldon,  who  had  thereupon  studied  the  matter 
and  agreed  entirely  with  the  plan.  The  two  officers  persuaded 
Messrs.  Hall  and  Vincent  to  forego  further  efforts  on  their 
individual  developments  and  to  devote  their  combined  skill 
and  experience  to  the  creation  of  an  ail-American  engine.  The 


368  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

project  was  further  taken  up  with  the  European  authorities  in 
Washington,  and  it  was  supported  unanimously. 

In  these  conferences  it  was  decided  to  design  two  models  of 
combat  engines.  Each  should  have  a  cylinder  diameter  of  five 
inches  and  a  piston  stroke  seven  inches  long;  but  one  type 
should  have  eight  cylinders  and  the  other  twelve.  The  8- 
cylinder  engine  should  develop  225  horsepower;  for  all  the 
experts  believed  then,  in  May,  1917,  that  such  a  motor  would 
anticipate  the  power  requirements  of  the  spring  of  1918.  The 
12-cylinder  engine  should  develop  330  horsepower;  for  it  was 
believed  that  this  would  be  the  equal  of  any  other  engine 
developed  through  1919  and  1920.  Every  foreign  representa- 
tive in  Washington  with  aeronautical  experience  agreed  that 
the  8-cylinder  225-horsepower  engine  would  be  the  peer  of 
anything  in  use  in  the  spring  of  1918;  yet,  so  rapidly  was 
aviation  history  moving  that  inside  of  ninety  days  it  became 
equally  clear  that  it  was  the  12-cylinder  engine  of  330  horse- 
power, and  not  the  8-cylinder  engine,  upon  which  we  should 
concentrate  for  the  spring  of  1918. 

With  these  considerations  in  mind,  Messrs.  Hall  and  Vin- 
cent set  to  work  to  lay  out  the  designs  on  paper.  With  them 
were  Colonel  Deeds  and  Colonel  Waldon.  It  was  the  function 
of  the  officers  to  insist  that  nothing  untried  or  experimental 
be  incorporated  in  the  engines ;  it  was  the  function  of  the  engi- 
neers to  direct  their  technical  knowledge  by  this  sine  qua  non. 
The  size  of  the  cylinders,  five  by  seven  inches,  was  adopted  not 
only  because  the  Curtiss  and  the  Hall-Scott  companies,  the 
largest  producers  of  aviation  engines  in  the  United  States,  had 
had  experience  with  engines  of  this  size,  but  also  because  a  new 
and  promising  French  engine,  the  Lorraine-Dietrich,  which  had 
just  made  its  appearance  in  experimental  form,  was  an  engine 
of  approximately  that  size. 

On  May  29,  1917,  Messrs.  Vincent  and  Hall  set  to  work. 
Within  two  or  three  days  they  had  outlined  the  important 
characteristics  of  the  engine  sufficiently  to  secure — on  June 
4 — the  approval  of  the  Aircraft  Production  Board  and  of  the 
Joint  Army  and  Navy  Technical  Board  of  the  building  of 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor  Car  Company 

FORCINGS  FOR  LIBERTY  ENGINE  CYLINDERS 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor   Car  Company 

GIRL  STUDENT  MECHANICS  AT  TRAINING  SCHOOL 
OF  LIBERTY  ENGINE  FACTORY 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor  Car  Company 

LIBERTY  ENGINES  MOVING  DOWN  ASSEMBLING  LINE 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor  Cui   Company 

ADJUSTING  IGNITION  SYSTEM  OF  LIBERTY  ENGINES 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  369 

five  experimental  models  each  of  the  8-cylinder  and  the  12- 
cylinder  sizes. 

The  detail  and  manufacturing  drawings  of  the  two  engines 
were  made  partly  by  the  staff  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Com- 
pany, under  Mr.  O.  E.  Hunt,  and  partly  by  an  organization 
recruited  from  various  automobile  factories  and  put  to  work 
under  Mr.  Vincent  at  the  Bureau  of  Standards  at  Washington. 
Due  credit  must  here  be  given  to  Dr.  S.  W.  Stratton,  the 
director  of  that  important  governmental  scientific  bureau.  The 
Liberty  engine  pioneers  woke  him  up  at  midnight  and  told  him 
of  their  needs.  He  promptly  tendered  all  the  facilities  of  the 
Bureau  of  Standards,  turning  over  to  the  work  an  entire  build- 
ing for  use  the  following  morning.  Thereafter  Dr.  Stratton 
gave  to  the  work  the  closest  cooperation  of  himself  and  his 
assistants. 

While  the  detail  drawings  were  being  made,  the  parts  for 
the  ten  engines  were  at  once  started  through  the  tool  rooms 
and  experimental  shops  of  various  motor  car  companies.  This 
work  centered  in  the  plant  of  the  Packard  Company,  which 
gave  to  it  its  entire  energy  and  its  splendid  facilities. 

Every  feature  in  the  design  of  these  engines  was  based  on 
thoroughly  tested  practice  of  the  past.  That  the  engine  was  a 
composite  is  shown  by  the  origins  of  its  various  parts: 

Cylinders:  The  Liberty  engine  derived  its  type  of  cylinder 
from  the  German  Mercedes,  the  English  Rolls-Royce,  the 
French  Lorraine-Dietrich,  and  others  produced  both  before 
and  during  the  war.  The  cylinders  were  steel  inner  shells  sur- 
rounded by  pressed-steel  water  jackets.  The  Packard  Company 
had  developed  a  practical  production  method  of  welding  to- 
gether the  several  parts  of  a  steel  cylinder. 

Cam  shafts  and  valve  mechanism  above  cylinder  heads :  The 
design  of  these  was  based  on  the  general  arrangement  of  the 
Mercedes  and  Rolls-Royce,  and  improved  by  the  Packard 
Motor  Car  Company  for  automatic  lubrication  without  waste 
of  oil. 

Cam-shaft  drive:  The  general  type  was  that  used  on  the 


370  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

Hall-Scott,  Mercedes,  Hispano-Suiza,  Rolls-Royce,  Renault, 
Fiat,  and  others. 

Angle  between  cylinders :  In  the  Liberty  the  included  angle 
between  cylinders  was  45  degrees.  This  angle  was  adopted  to 
save  head  resistance,  to  give  greater  strength  to  the  crank 
case,  and  to  reduce  periodic  vibration.  This  decision  was  based 
on  experience  with  the  Renault  and  Packard  engines. 

Electric  generator  and  ignition:  The  Delco  system  was 
adopted,  but  specially  designed  for  the  Liberty,  to  provide  a 
reliable  double  ignition. 

Pistons :  The  die-cast  aluminum-alloy  pistons  of  the  Liberty 
were  based  on  development  work  by  the  Hall-Scott  Company 
under  service  conditions. 

Connecting  rods :  These  were  of  the  forked  or  straddle  type 
used  on  the  DeDion  and  Cadillac  automobile  motors,  and  also 
on  the  Hispano-Suiza  and  other  aviation  engines. 

Crank  shaft :  A  design  of  standard  practice,  every  crank  pin 
operating  between  two  main  bearings,  as  in  the  Mercedes, 
Rolls-Royce,  Hall-Scott,  Curtiss,  and  Renault. 

Crank  case:  A  box  section  carrying  the  shaft  in  bearings 
clamped  between  the  top  and  bottom  halves  by  means  of  long 
through  bolts,  as  in  the  Mercedes  and  Hispano-Suiza. 

Lubrication:  The  system  of  lubrication  was  changed,  this 
being  the  only  change  of  design  made  in  the  Liberty  after  it 
was  first  put  down  on  paper.  The  original  system  combined 
the  features  of  a  dry  crank  case,  as  in  the  Rolls-Royce, 
with  pressure  feed  to  the  main  crank-shaft  bearings  and 
scupper  feed  to  the  crank-pin  bearings,  as  in  the  Hall-Scott 
and  certain  foreign  engines.  The  system  subsequently  adopted 
added  pressure  feed  to  the  crank-pin  bearings,  as  in  the  Rolls- 
Royce,  Hispano-Suiza,  and  other  engines. 

Propeller  hub :  Designed  after  the  practice  followed  by  such 
well-known  engines  as  the  Hispano-Suiza  and  Mercedes. 

Water  pump:  The  conventional  centrifugal  type  was 
adapted  to  the  Liberty. 

Carburetor:  The  Zenith  type  was  adapted  to  the  engine. 

As  the  detail  and  manufacturing  drawings  were  completed 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  371 

in  Washington  and  Detroit  they  were  taken  to  various  factories 
where  the  parts  for  the  first  engine  were  built. 

The  General  Aluminum  &  Brass  Manufacturing  Company 
of  Detroit  made  the  bronze-back,  babbitt-lined  bearings. 

The  Cadillac  Motor  Car  Company  of  Detroit  made  the  con- 
necting rods,  the  connecting-rod  upper-end  bushings,  the 
connecting-rod  bolts,  and  the  rocker-arm  assemblies. 

The  L.  O.  Gordon  Manufacturing  Company  of  Muskegon, 
Michigan,  made  the  cam  shafts. 

The  Park  Drop  Forge  Company  of  Cleveland  made  the 
crank-shaft  forgings.  These  forgings,  completely  heat  treated, 
were  turned  out  in  three  days,  because  Mr.  Hall  gave  the 
Cleveland  concern  permission  to  use  the  Hall-Scott  dies. 

The  Packard  Motor  Car  Company  machined  the  crank 
shafts  and  all  parts  not  furnished  or  finished  elsewhere. 

The  Hall-Scott  Motor  Car  Company  of  Berkeley,  Califor- 
nia, made  all  the  bevel  gears. 

The  Hess-Bright  Manufacturing  Company  of  Philadelphia 
made  the  ball  bearings. 

The  Burd  High-Compression  Ring  Company  of  Rockford, 
Illinois,  made  the  piston  rings. 

The  Aluminum  Castings  Company  of  Cleveland  made  the 
die-cast  alloy  pistons  and  machined  them  up  to  grinding. 

The  Rich  Tool  Company  of  Chicago  made  the  valves. 

The  Gibson  Company  of  Muskegon,  Michigan,  made  the 
springs. 

The  Packard  Company  made  all  the  patterns  for  the  alumi- 
num castings,  which  were  produced  by  the  General  Aluminum 
&  Brass  Manufacturing  Company  of  Detroit. 

The  Packard  Motor  Car  Company  used  many  of  its  own 
dies  in  order  to  obtain  suitable  drop  forgings  speedily,  and  also 
made  all  necessary  new  dies  not  made  elsewhere. 

As  these  various  parts  were  turned  out  they  were  hurried  to 
the  tool  room  of  the  Packard  Company,  where  the  assembling 
of  the  model  engines  was  in  progress. 

Before  the  models  were  built,  however,  extraordinary  pre- 
cautions had  been  taken  to  ensure  that  the  mechanism  should 


372  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

be  as  perfect  as  American  engineering  skill  could  make  it.  The 
plans  as  developed  were  submitted  to  H.  M.  Crane,  the  engi- 
neer of  the  Simplex  Motor  Car  Company  and  of  the  Wright- 
Martin  Aircraft  Corporation,  who  had  made  a  special  study 
of  aviation  engines  in  Europe,  and  who  for  upward  of  a  year 
had  been  working  on  the  production  of  the  Hispano-Suiza 
1 50-horsepower  engine  in  this  country.  He  looked  the  plans 
over,  and  so  did  David  Fergusson,  chief  engineer  of  the  Fierce- 
Arrow  Motor  Car  Company.  Many  other  of  the  best  experts  in 
the  country  in  the  production  of  internal-combustion  motors 
constructively  criticized  the  plans,  these  including  such  men 
as  Henry  M.  Leland  and  George  H.  Layng,  of  the  Cadillac 
Motor  Car  Company,  and  F.  F.  Beall  and  Edward  Roberts, 
of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company. 

When  the  engineers  were  through,  the  practical  production 
men  were  given  their  turn.  The  plane  and  engine  builders 
examined  the  plans  to  make  sure  that  each  minute  part  was  so 
designed  as  to  make  it  most  adaptable  to  quantity  production. 
The  scrutiny  of  the  Liberty  plans  went  back  in  the  production 
scale  even  farther  than  this ;  for  the  actual  builders  of  machine 
tools  were  called  in  to  examine  the  specifications  and  to  suggest 
modifications,  if  necessary,  that  would  make  the  production 
of  parts  most  feasible  in  machine  tools  either  of  existing  types 
or  of  easiest  manufacture. 

Thus  scrutinized  and  criticized,  the  plans  of  the  engine  were 
from  every  point  of  view  the  best  that  American  industrial 
genius  could  produce  in  the  time  available.  It  was  due  to  this 
exhaustive  preliminary  study  that  no  radical  changes  were  ever 
made  in  the  original  design.  The  Liberty  engine  was  not  the 
materialization  of  magic  nor  the  product  of  any  single  individ- 
ual or  company:  it  was  a  well-considered  and  carefully  pre- 
pared design  based  on  large  practical  aviation-engine  expe- 
rience. 

On  July  4,  1917,  the  first  8-cylinder  Liberty  engine  was 
delivered  in  Washington.  This  was  less  than  six  weeks  after 
Messrs.  Hall  and  Vincent  drew  the  first  line  of  their  plans. 
The  same  procedure  was  even  then  being  repeated  for  the  12- 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  373 

cylinder  engine.  By  the  25th  day  of  August  the  model  12- 
cylinder  Liberty  had  successfully  passed  its  fifty-hour  test.  In 
this  test  its  power  ranged  from  301  to  320  horsepower.  As  an 
achievement  in  speed  in  the  development  of  a  successful  new 
engine,  this  performance  had  never  been  equaled  in  the  motor 
history  of  any  country.  No  successful  American  automobile 
motor  was  ever  put  into  production  under  a  year  of  trial  and 
experimentation.  We  may  well  believe  that  in  the  third  year  of 
war  the  European  aviation  designers  were  working  at  top  speed 
to  improve  the  motive  power  of  airplanes;  yet  in  1917  the 
British  war  cabinet  report  contained  the  following  language: 

Experience  shows  that  as  a  rule,  from  the  date  of  the  conception  and 
design  of  an  aero  engine,  to  the  delivery  of  the  first  engine  in  series  by 
the  manufacturer,  more  than  a  year  elapses. 

But  America  designed  and  produced  experimentally  a  good 
engine  in  six  weeks  and  a  great  one  in  three  months,  and  began 
delivering  it  in  series  in  five  months.  This  record  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  we  could  employ  our  best  engineering  talent  with- 
out stint,  to  the  further  fact  that  there  were  no  restrictions 
upon  our  use  of  designs  and  patents  proved  successful  by 
actual  experience,  and  to  the  fact  that  the  original  engine 
design  produced  under  such  conditions  stood  every  expert 
criticism  and  test  that  could  be  put  upon  it  and  emerged  from 
the  trial  without  substantial  modification. 

As  soon  as  the  first  Liberty  models  had  passed  their  official 
tests,  plans  were  at  once  made  to  put  them  into  manufacture. 
The  members  of  the  Aircraft  Production  Board  chose  for  the 
chief  of  the  engine  production  department  Harold  H.  Em- 
mons, an  attorney  and  manufacturer  of  Detroit,  Michigan, 
who,  as  a  lieutenant  in  the  Naval  Reserve  Force,  was  just 
being  called  by  the  Navy  Department  into  active  service.  The 
production  of  all  aviation  engines,  for  both  Army  and  Navy, 
was  in  his  hands  throughout  the  rest  of  the  war.  He  placed 
orders  for  100,993  aviation  engines  of  all  types,  which  in- 
volved the  expenditure  of  $450,000,000  and  more  of  govern- 
ment funds.  Of  these,  31,814  were  delivered  ready  for  service 


374  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

before  the  signing  of  the  armistice.  The  United  States  reached 
a  daily  engine  production  greater  than  that  of  England  and 
France  combined. 

In  August,  1917,  it  was  intended  to  manufacture  both  en- 
gines, the  8-cylinder  and  the  12-cylinder,  and  an  agreement  was 
reached  with  the  Ford  Motor  Company  of  Detroit  to  produce 
8-cylinder  Liberty  engines  to  the  number  of  10,000.  But 
before  this  contract  could  be  signed  the  increasing  powers  of 
the  newest  European  air  engines  indicated  to  our  commission 
abroad  that  we  should  concentrate  our  manufacturing  efforts 
upon  the  12  alone,  that  being  an  engine  of  a  power  then  dis- 
tinctly in  advance  of  the  rapid  evolution  of  aviation  engines. 
The  engine  production  department,  therefore,  entered  into 
contracts  for  the  construction  of  22,500  of  the  12-cylinder 
Liberties,  and  the  first  of  these  contracts  was  signed  in  August, 
a  few  days  after  the  endurance  tests  had  demonstrated  that 
the  12-cylinder  engine  was  a  success. 

Of  this  number  of  Liberty  engines,  the  Packard  Motor  Car 
Company  contracted  to  build  6,000 ;  the  Lincoln  Motor  Com- 
pany, 6,000;  the  Ford  Motor  Company,  5,000;  Nordyke  & 
Marmon,  3,000;  the  General  Motors  Corporation  (Buick  and 
Cadillac  plants),  2,000;  and  an  additional  contract  of  500 
engines  was  let  to  the  Trego  Motors  Corporation. 

Early  in  the  Liberty  engine  project  it  became  evident  that 
one  of  the  great  stumblingblocks  to  volume  production  would 
be  the  steel  cylinder,  if  it  were  necessary  to  machine  it  out  of 
a  solid  or  partially  pierced  forging  such  as  is  used  for  shell 
making.  This  problem  was  laid  before  Henry  Ford  and  the 
engineering  organization  of  the  Ford  Motor  Company  at 
Detroit,  and  they  developed  the  unique  method  of  making  the 
cylinders  out  of  steel  tubing.  One  end  of  the  tube  was  cut 
obliquely,  heated,  and  in  successive  operations  closed  over  and 
then  expanded  into  the  shape  of  the  combustion  chamber,  with 
all  bosses  in  place  on  the  dome.  The  lower  end  was  then  heated 
and  upset  in  a  bulldozer  until  the  holding-down  flange  had 
been  extruded  from  the  barrel  at  the  right  place.  By  this 
method  a  production  of  2,000  rough  cylinders  a  day  was 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  375 

reached.  The  final  forging  was  so  near  to  the  shape  desired 
that  millions  of  pounds  of  scrap  were  saved  over  other  meth- 
ods, to  say  nothing  of  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  done  away 
with.  The  development  of  this  cylinder-making  method  was 
one  of  the  important  contributions  to  the  quantity  production 
of  Liberty  engines. 

It  was  evident  that  in  the  actual  production  of  the  Liberty 
engine  there  would  continually  arise  practical  questions  of 
manufacturing  policy  that  might  entail  modifications  of  the 
manufacturing  methods;  and  our  aviation  authorities  in 
Europe  could  be  expected  to  advance  suggestions  from  time  to 
time  that  might  need  to  be  embodied  in  the  mechanism.  Con- 
sequently it  was  necessary  to  create  a  permanent  development 
and  standardization  administration  for  the  Liberty  engine. 
Nor  could  this  supervision  be  located  in  Washington,  because 
of  the  extreme  need  for  haste :  it  must  exist  in  the  vicinity  of 
the  plants  which  were  doing  the  manufacturing.  For  this  reason 
the  production  of  the  Liberty  engine  was  centered  in  the 
Detroit  manufacturing  district.  In  this  district  was  located 
the  principal  motor-manufacturing-plant  capacity  of  the 
United  States.  James  G.  Heaslet,  formerly  general  manager 
of  the  Studebaker  Corporation  and  an  engineer  and  manufac- 
turer of  wide  experience,  was  installed  as  district  manager. 
The  problems  incident  to  the  inspection  and  production  of  the 
Liberty  engine  were  placed  in  charge  of  a  committee  consisting 
of  Major  Heaslet  (chairman) ;  Lieutenant  Colonel  Hall,  one 
of  the  designers  of  the  engine;  Henry  M.  Leland;  C.  Harold 
Wills,  of  the  Ford  Motor  Company;  and  Messrs.  F.  F.  Beall 
and  Edward  Roberts,  of  the  Packard  Motor  Car  Company. 
With  them  were  also  associated  D.  McCall  White,  the  engineer 
of  the  Cadillac  Motor  Company,  and  Walter  Chrysler,  of  the 
Buick  Company. 

The  creation  of  this  committee  virtually  made  a  single 
manufacturing  concern  of  the  several,  previously  rival,  motor 
companies  engaged  in  producing  the  Liberty  engine.  To  these 
meetings  the  experts  brought  without  reservation  the  trade 
secrets  and  shop  processes  developed  in  their  own  establish- 


376  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

ments  during  the  preceding  years  of  competition.  Such  co- 
operation was  without  parallel  in  the  history  of  American 
industry,  and  only  a  great  emergency  such  as  the  war  with 
Germany  could  have  brought  it  about.  It  aided  wonderfully 
in  the  development  and  production  of  the  Liberty  engine. 

Moreover,  the  Government  drew  heavily  upon  the  talent  of 
these  great  manufacturing  organizations  for  meeting  the  spe- 
cial problems  presented  by  the  necessity  of  filling  in  the 
briefest  possible  time  the  largest  aviation  engine  order  ever 
known.  Short  cuts  that  these  firms  might  have  applied  effec- 
tively to  their  own  private  advantage  were  devised  for  the 
Liberty  engine  and  freely  turned  over  to  the  Government. 
The  Packard  Company  gave  a  great  share  of  its  equipment  and 
personnel  to  the  development.  The  most  conspicuous  success 
in  the  science  of  quantity  production  in  the  world  was  the  Ford 
Motor  Company,  which  devoted  its  organization  to  the  task 
of  speeding  up  the  output  of  Liberty  engines.  In  addition  to 
the  unique  and  wonderfully  efficient  method  of  making  rough 
engine  cylinders  out  of  steel  tubing,  the  Ford  organization 
also  perfected  for  the  Liberty  a  new  method  of  producing  more 
durable  and  satisfactory  bearings.  Messrs.  H.  M.  and  W.  C. 
Leland,  whose  names  are  indissolubly  linked  with  the  Cadillac 
automobile,  organized  and  erected  the  enormous  plant  of  the 
Lincoln  Motor  Company  and  equipped  it  for  the  production  of 
the  Liberty,  at  a  total  expense  of  approximately  $8,000,000. 

Balanced  against  these  advantages  brought  by  highly 
trained  technical  skill  and  unselfish  cooperation  were  handicaps 
such  as  perhaps  no  other  great  American  industrial  venture 
had  ever  known.  In  the  first  place,  an  internal-combustion 
engine  with  cylinders  of  5-inch  bore  and  pistons  of  7-inch 
stroke — the  Liberty  measurements — was  larger  than  the  auto- 
mobile engines  then  in  use  in  this  country.  This  meant  that, 
while  we  apparently  had  an  enormous  plant — the  combined 
American  automobile  factories — ready  for  the  production  of 
Liberty  engines,  actually  the  machinery  in  these  plants  was 
not  large  enough  for  the  new  work,  so  that  new  machinery 
must  be  built.  In  some  instances  machinery  had  to  be  designed 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  377 

anew  for  the  special  purpose.  To  produce  every  part  of  one 
Liberty  engine,  something  between  2,500  and  3,000  small 
jigs,  tools,  and  fixtures  are  employed.  For  large  outputs,  much 
of  this  equipment  must  be  duplicated  over  and  over  again.  To 
provide  the  whole  joint  workshop  with  this  equipment  was 
one  of  the  unseen  jobs  incidental  to  the  construction  of 
Liberty  engines — unseen,  that  is,  by  the  general  public.  Yet  it 
compelled  the  United  States  to  commandeer  the  capacity  of 
all  available  tool  shops  east  of  the  Mississippi  River  and  de- 
vote it  to  the  production  of  jigs  and  tools  for  the  Liberty 
engine  factories. 

Then  there  was  the  question  of  mechanical  skill  in  the  fac- 
tories. It  was  soon  clear  that  an  automobile  motor  is  a  simple 
mechanism  compared  with  an  aviation  engine.  The  machinists 
in  ordinar}^  automobile  plants  did  not  have  the  skill  to  produce 
the  Liberty  engine  parts  successfully.  Consequently  it  became 
necessary  to  educate  thousands  of  mechanics,  men  and  women 
alike,  to  do  this  new  work. 

It  was  surprising  to  what  extent  unfriendly  influence  in  the 
United  States,  much  of  it  probably  of  pro-German  inclina- 
tion, cut  a  figure  in  the  situation.  This  was  particularly  true 
in  the  supply  factories  which  furnished  tools  to  the  Liberty 
engine  plants.  Approximately  85  per  cent  of  the  tools  first 
delivered  for  this  work  were  found  to  be  inaccurate  and  incor- 
rect. These  had  to  be  remade  before  they  could  be  used.  Such 
tools  as  were  delivered  to  the  Liberty  plants  would  mysteri- 
ously disappear,  or  vital  equipment  would  be  injured  in  un- 
usual ways ;  in  several  instances  cans  of  explosives  were  found 
in  the  coal  at  power  plants;  fire-extinguishing  apparatus  was 
discovered  to  have  been  rendered  useless  by  acts  of  depreda- 
tion; and  from  numerous  other  evidences  the  builders  of 
Liberty  engines  were  aware  that  the  enemy  had  his  agents  in 
their  plants. 

Difficulty  was  also  experienced  in  the  production  of  metals 
for  the  new  engines.  The  materials  demanded  were  frequently 
of  a  much  higher  grade  than  the  corresponding  materials  used 
in  ordinary  automobile  motors.  Here  was  another  unseen  phase 


378  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

of  development  which  had  to  be  worked  out  patiently  by  the 
producers  of  raw  materials. 

Difficulties  in  transportation  during  the  winter  of  1917- 
1918  added  their  share  to  the  perplexing  problems  of  the 
engine  builders;  and  at  times  the  scarcity  of  coal  threatened 
the  complete  shutdown  of  some  of  the  plants. 

Against  such  obstacles,  the  engine-production  department 
forced  the  manufacture  of  the  Liberty  engine  at  a  speed  never 
before  known  in  the  automotive  industry.  In  December,  1917, 
the  Government  received  the  first  twenty-two  Liberty  engines 
of  the  12-cylinder  type,  durable  and  dependable,  a  standard- 
ized, concrete  product,  only  seven  months  after  the  Liberty 
engine  existed  merely  as  an  idea  in  the  brains  of  two  engineers. 
These  first  engines  developed  approximately  330  horsepower; 
and  so  also  did  the  first  300  Libert)'^  engines  delivered,  these 
deliveries  being  completed  in  the  early  spring  of  1918. 

When  the  Liberty  engine  was  designed,  our  aviation  experts 
believed  that  330  horsepower  was  so  far  in  advance  of  the 
development  of  aero  engines  in  Europe  that  we  could  safely 
go  ahead  with  the  production  of  this  type  on  a  quantity  basis. 
But  again  we  reckoned  without  an  accurately  prophetic  knowl- 
edge of  the  course  of  engine  development  abroad.  We  were 
building  the  first  300  Liberty  engines  at  330  horsepower  when 
our  aviation  reports  informed  us  from  overseas  that  an  even 
higher  horsepower  would  be  desirable.  Therefore  our  engi- 
neers "stepped  up"  the  power  of  the  Liberty  12-cylinder  engine 
to  375  horsepower.  Several  hundred  motors  of  this  power  were 
in  process  of  completion  when,  once  more,  our  observers  in 
France  advised  us  that,  by  adding  another  twenty-five  horse- 
power to  the  Liberty  and  making  it  400  horsepower  in 
strength,  we  could  be  sure  of  leading  all  the  combatant  nations 
in  size  and  power  of  aviation  engines  during  1918  and  1919. 
This  last  step,  we  were  assured,  was  the  final,  definitive  one. 
But  to  anticipate  possible  extraordinary  development  of  en- 
gines by  other  nations,  our  engineers  went  even  farther  than 
the  mark  advised  by  our  overseas  observers  and  raised  the 
horsepower  of  the  Liberty  engine  to  something  in  excess  of  400. 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  379 

This  enormous  increase  over  the  original  power  of  the 
Liberty  engine  required  changes  in  the  construction;  notably, 
increases  in  the  strength  of  practically  all  the  working  parts, 
including  the  crank  shaft,  the  connecting  rods,  and  the  bear- 
ings. The  change  also  resulted  in  making  scrap  iron  of  a  large 
quantity  of  the  jigs  and  special  tools  employed  in  making  the 
lighter  engines.  A  still  further  change  had  to  come  in  the  grade 
of  the  steel  used  in  some  of  the  parts,  and  this  went  back  to  the 
smelting  plants,  where  new  and  better  methods  of  producing 
steel  and  aluminum  for  the  Liberty  engine  had  to  be  developed. 
Thus,  although  there  were  no  fundamental  changes  in  the  de- 
sign of  the  engine,  the  increase  of  its  power  required  a  con- 
siderable readjustment  in  the  engine  plants.  So  rapidly  were 
these  changes  made  that  on  the  first  anniversary  of  the  day 
when  the  design  of  the  Liberty  engine  was  begun — May  29, 
1918 — the  Signal  Corps  had  received  1,243  Liberty  engines. 
In  this  achievement,  motor  history  was  written  in  this  country 
as  never  before. 

From  a  popular  standpoint  it  may  seem  as  if  the  Liberty 
engine  were  radically  changed  after  its  inception,  but  it  was 
not.  In  the  fundamental  thing,  the  design,  there  was  but  one 
change  made  after  the  engine  was  laid  down  on  paper  in  May, 
1917:  namely,  that  in  the  oiling  system.  The  original  Liberty 
engine  was  partially  fed  with  oil  by  the  so-called  scupper  sys- 
tem, whereas  this  was  later  changed  to  a  forced  feed  under 
compression.  The  scupper  feed  worked  successfully,  but  the 
forced  feed  is  foolproof  and  was  therefore  installed  upon  the 
advice  of  the  preponderance  of  expert  criticism.  It  is  also  true 
that  in  working  out  certain  practical  manufacturing  processes 
some  of  the  original  measurements  were  altered.  But  this  is  a 
common  experience  in  the  manufacture  of  any  internal-com- 
bustion engine,  and  alterations  made  for  factory  expediency  are 
not  regarded  as  changes  in  design,  nor  are  they  important. 

The  delivery  of  twenty-two  motors  in  December  of  1917 
was  followed  by  the  completion  of  forty  in  January,  1918.  In 
February  the  delivery  was  seventy.  In  March  this  jumped  to 


38o  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

122;  then  came  a  leap  in  April  to  415;  and  in  May  the 
deliveries  amounted  to  620. 

The  quantity  production  of  Liberties  may  be  said  to  have 
started  in  June,  1918,  one  year  after  the  conception  of  the 
engine  in  Washington.  In  that  month  1,102  motors  of  the 
most  powerful  type  were  delivered  to  the  service.  In  July  the 
figure  was  1,589;  in  August,  2,297;  i^  September,  2,362.  Then 
in  October  came  an  enormous  increase  to  the  total  of  3,878 
Liberty  engines.  During  the  month  before  the  armistice  was 
signed,  the  engine  factories  were  producing  1 50  engines  a  day. 

In  all,  up  to  November  29,  1918,  15,572  Liberty  engines 
were  produced  in  the  United  States.  In  the  disposal  of  them 
the  American  Navy  received  3,742  for  its  seaplanes ;  the  plants 
manufacturing  airplanes  in  this  country  took  5,323  of  them; 


FIGURE  18 

Liberty  Engines  Produced  Each  Month  during  igi8 


3878 


Jan.    Feb.     Mar.    Apr.     May    Jun.    Jul.    Aug.    Sep.    Oct.    Nov.     Dec. 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor   Car   Company 

TESTING  FIELD  FOR  LIBERTY  ENGINES 


Photo  from  Packard  Motor   Car   Company 

LIBERTY  ENGINES  READY  FOR  SHIPMENT 


Photo  from  Ford  Motor  Company 

UNVEILING  THE  TEN  THOUSANDTH  LIBERTY  ENGINE 


Photo  from  Air  Service 

INSTALLING  LIBERTY  ENGINES  IN  LEPERE  FUSELAGES 


THE  LIBERTY  ENGINE  381 

907  were  sent  to  various  aviation  fields  for  training  purposes; 
to  the  American  Expeditionary  Forces  in  France,  in  addition 
to  the  engines  which  went  over  installed  in  their  planes,  we 
sent  4,511  Liberty  engines;  and  1,089  went  to  the  British, 
French,  and  Italian  air  services. 

Some  of  the  earliest  Liberties  were  sent  to  Europe.  In  Jan- 
uary, 1918,  we  shipped  three  to  our  own  forces  in  France.  In 
March  we  sent  ten  to  the  British,  six  to  the  French,  and  five  to 
the  Italians.  By  June  7  the  English  tests  had  convinced  the 
British  Air  Ministry  that  the  Liberty  engine  was  in  the  first 
line  of  high-powered  aviation  engines  and  a  most  valuable 
contribution  to  the  Allied  aviation  program.  The  British  Air 
Ministry  so  cabled  to  Lord  Reading,  the  British  ambassador  in 
Washington.'  Again  on  September  26  the  British  Air  Ministry 
reported  that  in  identical  airplanes  the  Liberty  engine  per- 
formed at  least  as  well  as  the  Rolls-Royce  engine.  Birkight, 
who  designed  the  Hispano-Suiza  engine  in  France,  declared 
that  the  Liberty  engine  was  superior  to  any  high-powered 
aviation  engine  then  developed  on  the  Continent  of  Europe. 

A  more  concrete  evidence  of  the  esteem  in  which  this  Ameri- 
can creation  was  held  by  the  European  expert  lies  in  the  size 
of  the  orders  which  the  various  Allied  governments  placed 
with  the  United  States.  The  British  took  1,000  Liberty  engines 
immediately  and  declared  that  they  wished  to  increase  this 
order  to  5,500  to  be  delivered  by  December  31,  1918.  The 
French  directed  inquiries  as  to  the  possibility  of  taking  one- 
fifth  of  our  complete  output  of  Liberty  engines.  The  Italians 
also  indicated  their  intention  of  purchasing  heavily  for  imme- 
diate delivery. 

This  increased  demand  for  the  engine  had  not  been  antici- 
pated in  our  original  plans.  We  had  no  idea  that  the  Allied 
governments  would  turn  from  their  own  highly  developed 
engines  to  ask  for  Liberty  engines  in  such  quantities.  The  origi- 
nal program  of  22,500  engines  was  only  sufficient  for  our  own 
army  and  navy  requirements.  As  soon  as  the  foreign  govern- 
ments came  in  with  their  demands,  we  immediately  increased 
the  orders  placed  with  all  the  existing  Liberty  engine  builders, 


382  THE  ARMIES  OF  INDUSTRY 

and  in  addition  contracted  to  take  the  entire  manufacturing 
facilities  of  the  Willys-Overland  Company  at  its  plants  in 
Toledo  and  Elyria,  Ohio,  and  Elmira,  New  York.  We  also 
engaged  the  entire  capacity  of  the  Olds  Motor  plant  at 
Lansing,  Michigan.  In  addition  we  subsequently  contracted 
for  the  production  of  8,000  of  the  8-cylinder  engines.  The 
number  of  engines  which  would  have  been  delivered  under  con- 
tract, if  peace  had  not  cut  short  the  production,  would  have 
been  56,100  engines  of  the  12-cylinder  type  and  8,000  of 
the  8's. 

The  foreign  governments  associated  with  us  in  the  war 
against  Germany  showered  their  demands  upon  us  for  great 
numbers  of  the  American  engines,  not  only  because  of  the 
sheer  excellence  of  the  Liberty,  but  partly  because  their  plane 
production  exceeded  their  output  of  engines.  Mr.  John  D. 
Ryan,  Director  of  Aircraft  Production,  orally  agreed  to  deliver 
to  the  French  1,500  Liberty  engines  by  December  31,  and 
further  agreed  to  deliver  engines  to  the  French  at  the  rate  of 
750  a  month  during  the  first  six  months  of  1919.  The  British 
had  already  received  1,000  Liberty  engines,  and  this  order  was 
increased  with  Mr.  Ryan  personally  by  several  thousand  addi- 
tional engines  to  be  delivered  in  the  early  part  of  1919.  When 
the  armistice  was  signed  the  Liberty  engine  was  being  produced 
at  a  rate  which  promised  to  make  it,  before  many  months  had 
passed,  the  dominant  motive  power  of  the  war  in  the  air. 

The  engine  was  originally  named  the  "United  States  Stand- 
ard 12-cylinder  Aviation  Engine."  In  view  of  the  service  which 
it  promised  to  render  to  the  cause  of  civilization.  Admiral 
D.  W.  Taylor,  the  chief  construction  officer  of  the  Navy,  sug- 
gested during  the  early  part  of  the  period  of  production  that 
the  original  prosaic  name  be  discarded  and  that  the  engine 
be  rechristened  the  "Liberty."  Under  this  name  the  engine 
took  its  place  in  the  history  of  the  war  as  one  of  the  most 
efficient  agencies  developed  and  employed  by  this  country. 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


JUL  2  8  1980 

DATE  DUE 

. 

f 

\ 

CATLOKO 

PIIINTCOINU.S.A. 

-HOW  AMERICA 
-WENT  TO  WAR 


THE  ARMIES 
OF  INDUSTRY 

CROWELL  AND 
WILSON 

YALE 
UNIVERSITY 

PRESS 


lD570.7b    C7    V. 1 

Crowell,    Benedict,    1869- 

The   armies   of    industryj 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001  311  413  7 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CA,  RIVERSIDE  LIBRARY 


3  1210  01082  8463 


\ 


